Bishop Robert Hermann is the man priests in St. Louis call when they encounter a parishioner who’s had a run-in with a ghost or evil spirit. Hermann is...
Theology
Years ago I worked summers on a farm in Michigan, near a fundamentalist Christian community. I didn’t know much about them other than that you didn’t want to...
In The Epic of Gilgamesh, viewed by many as the oldest surviving piece of literature in the world, parts of which date to two millennia before Christ, the hero...
No sooner did our new pontiff announce his name as Francis than some “prophecy experts” took to the airwaves, claiming that the new pope is “Peter the Roman,”...
All three synoptic gospels tell the story of the transfiguration of Jesus (Matt. 17:1-13; Mark 9:3-13; Luke 9:28-36)—frequently a sign of the importance of an...
When I was a teenager, I took a religious education correspondence course from the Paulist Fathers. They would send me booklets to read, and at the end of them...
This Jesuit had to confront what he believed about God and suffering when his sister became a quadriplegic. But the letters of comfort were what really threw...
We sometimes say of people that they’ve been “to hell and back.” Christianity says the same thing about our Savior. The statement is found in the Apostles’...
Kathy Barkdull started her career in parish ministry the same way many others have: The director of religious education at her parish tapped her on the...
You won’t find the phrase “original sin” in the Bible. The story of humanity’s “fall” in Genesis 1 doesn’t use the term, and St. Paul, one of the church’s...
