James Joyce said it best in Finnegans Wake that “Catholic means here comes everybody.” Our word “catholic” comes from a Greek adjective meaning “universal” and...
Church history
In this article from 2005, Tara Dix wonders if it is time for a new agenda forty years after the close of Vatican II. Leading up to this month’s 40th...
From the saints to popes and bishops to theologians, Catholic thinkers have long made the case for social justice, tracing its origins to scriptural accounts...
The Bible is considered the inspired word of God by the faithful. So you have to wonder: where did it come from? With all the writings floating around the...
For his book, Thank You, St. Jude, Robert Orsi researched devotion to St. Jude, patron of difficult or hopeless causes, which has been fostered by the...
In the late 1980s, when Robert Orsi had just begun his work studying devotion to St. Jude, he had dinner with a prominent liturgist who had spent years...
Because of the cultural situation of the time, women wrote little and wielded power even less, so it’s hard to speak of “Church Mothers” in the same way we do...
When we talk about “the catechism” today we are most likely referring to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 1992 to...
A church historian explains why the events of the 1960s still echo through the church 40 years later. Mark Massa, S.J. was 14 years old on the First Sunday of...
Most Catholics have a pet list of teachings that they wish would be declared infallibly, or ex cathedra (from the Chair of Peter). Odds are that these often...
