Within hours of President Donald Trump’s new executive order March 6 banning refugees from six majority-Muslim nations, Catholic and other religious groups joined secular leaders in questioning the wisdom of such a move, with others vowing to oppose it outright.
And so it begins. News arrives by way of our people, young and old, of roustings by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, commonly and appropriately known as ICE.
The chairmen of two U.S. bishops’ committees praised President Donald Trump’s repeal of the Obama administration’s directive on transgender access to bathrooms.
Northwest of Houston, Texas, Deacon Baldy’s features a rotation of several gourmet food trucks with a curated selection of 40 craft beers from breweries in California to neighboring Conroe, among dozens of others, and it was named after the late Deacon Mike Mims of St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in The Woodlands. Deacon Mims, who was Kevin Mims’ father, died in a helicopter accident in January 2015.
In its first four months, the National Museum of African American History and Culture has become one of the most popular attractions in Washington, as it welcomed nearly 750,000 visitors.
Religious leaders are the “trusted soldiers” people turn to when dealing with mental health issues, and their ability to identify God’s presence in people’s lives gives hope and strength to hurting members of the community, according to speakers at a Mental Health Summit for faith leaders in Manhattan Feb. 13.
Almost half of adult Catholics, 45 percent, typically receive ashes – made from the burned and blessed palms of the previous year’s Palm Sunday – at Ash Wednesday services, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.
Eileen Markey’s new book, “A Radical Faith: The Assassination of Sister Maura” (New York: Nation Books, 2016, pp. 336), is a beautiful and eye-opening depiction of a Maryknoll Sister from the Brooklyn Diocese who was brutally murdered, assassinated really, in El Salvador on Dec. 2, 1980. There were three other American women horribly killed with her: Ita Ford, also a Maryknoll nun from Brooklyn, Jean Donovan, a laywoman missionary volunteer from Connecticut, and Dorothy Kazel, an Ursuline nun from Cleveland.
Talk of President Donald Trump possibly signing an executive order on religious freedom – which drew both criticism and praise – has been replaced with discussion about what happened to it and what a final version, if there is one, will look like.
This spring, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., hosts “Della Robbia: Sculpting With Color in Renaissance Florence,” a rare exhibit of some 40 works of painted terracotta sculpture, mostly the creation of three generations of the renowned della Robbia family of artists.
