ON JAN. 20, Pope Francis authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to publish decrees acknowledging the “heroic virtues” of six men and one woman: two diocesan priests, three priests in religious orders, the foundress of an Italian religious community and a Polish layman.
The suicide of someone you love is shattering. You think that you have lost your mind, that you are crazy, that you won’t be able to live through the next hour, let alone the rest of your life. You are convinced that you’re the only person who has ever felt this way, that no one in the world could ever experience such devastation and be able to survive
DURING THE HEYDAY of the Solidarity movement, a famous Polish slogan had it that, “For Poland to be Poland, 2 + 2 Must Always = 4.” It was a quirky but pointed way of challenging the communist culture of the lie, which befogged public life and warped relationships between parents and children, husbands and wives, colleagues and neighbors.
by Richard Doerflinger
THIS PAST PRESIDENTIAL campaign, one of the most bruising and discouraging on record, left many of us dissatisfied with the electoral system and politics in general. As usual, Catholics voted for the winning candidate – despite internal divisions between churchgoers and nonchurchgoers and between white and Hispanic Catholics.
SPEAKING OF PUBLIC policy debates, Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that, while everyone had a right to his opinion, no one had a right to his own facts. Something similar might be said about today’s debates in the Church: everyone has a right to their own opinion about the state of Catholicism in 2017, but no one has a right to invent their own Church history.
by Dr. Hosffman Ospino U.S. CATHOLICISM AND the Hispanic experience in the second decade of the 21st century practically go hand in hand. The evidence? Well, just look around. Look at the families attending Mass in our parishes, the children being baptized and receiving first Communion, the faces of young Catholics today, the various rhythms that give life to liturgical music in our parishes, among other signs.
William Christopher passed away on Dec. 31, 2016, but he became a weekly presence in people’s living rooms during the 1970s and ’80s playing Army chaplain Father Francis John Patrick Mulcahy on the TV series “MASH.”
THE ARCHBISHOP OF Toronto is given to deprecating himself as “just a simple country cardinal.”
IT IS ESTIMATED the new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington has 33,000 objects, 3,500 of which are presently on display.
PBS’ “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly” – the only program of its kind: a weekly half-hour program that took a serious look at religion and religious issues across the spectrum of belief, and how faith intersected with politics, society and culture – will air its final broadcast in late February.
