Catholic. Pastoral. Trusted.
Ideas like morality, relationships, hope, and love are hard to understand and sometimes even harder to live out in a Christian way. What can we use to help us when choices are tough, answers vague, and the future uncertain? The roots of Catholic social teaching offer some simple ideas that,...
This month’s issue is about discernment—a difficult concept. Our best choices sometimes come only after prayerful contemplation. Fr. Mark Haydu, the international coordinator of the Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums, finds inspiration in art. His new book, Meditations on Vatican Art, offers readers a doorway to the beauty...
A photograph of my mother’s brother, Lawrence Lynch, had a special place on the family piano in our home. Dressed in a captain’s uniform, he’s seated at a metal desk. He’s smiling warmly. Uncle Lawrence was a Redemptorist priest who served as an army chaplain with the Fighting 69th Irish...
Christians who envision life to be like a voyage on the open sea seek the guiding light of Mary. In his classic sermon on Mary, St. Bernard of Clairvaux encourages us to take solace in Our Lady, “star of the sea” (Stella Maris), as we navigate the volatile sea that...
The Yes that Changed the World It always amazes me that the Holy Spirit seeks to “renew the face of the earth” (Psalm 104:30) by coming to the simple and lowly, to the little, to the frightened, to the least. After these encounters their lives begin to flower, with nothing...
October 2012 This October, the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council provides an opportune moment to look back and see what the council had to say about Mary. The council didn’t produce a document solely about the Mother of God; however, it did speak about Mary’s...