Joe Dawson is learning that there’s a skill to cutting celery and it begins with how the chef’s knife is held – not by the handle but firmly above the sharpened blade.

As identical twin sisters, Sister Judith and Sister Maristella Maldonado not only look exactly alike, but as members of the Dominican Sisters of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima, they dress alike, wearing that order’s white habit and black veil with white trim.

Archbishop Alexander Sample of Portland, Ore., says the current crisis of sexual abuse within the Church is “a time for saints” in order to “rectify the institutional failures that allow such grave offenses to occur.”

At many Catholic schools, social justice might not be an assigned class, but it is part of the fabric of what they do throughout the school year from helping those in need to speaking up on social issues.

A dead Dominican priest in outer space, a retired Marine turned priest from Boston recruited to help solve an extra-terrestrial crisis, and a planet earth ravaged by war and environmental destruction. These are all the elements of W.L. Patenaude’s debut novel, “A Printer’s Choice,” just out this month.

Catholic journal of opinion Commonweal describes writer Alice McDermott as one of America’s greatest living novelists, while The Washington Post, in a review of her latest book, says the Catholic Church “lurks” in all of her stories.