The logo for last year’s Year of Mercy, designed by Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik, depicts the Good Shepherd, who in his mercy takes humanity on his shoulders...
Religion
Essays explaining our faith, including stories about church teaching, Vatican documents, canon law, liturgical theology, and other Catholic topics.
Life is more than we bargain for. The election results last November proved that, in an hour of frank astonishment for every side of the social debate. Behold...
My friend Tim worked in Jerusalem. One night he was invited to supper at the home of a Palestinian employee. Tim arrived at the single-room dwelling, where an...
When I had heard that a Christian pastor in Florida was planning to burn the Quran as an evil book, I shuddered. My friend Abdul recites the Quran and finds...
It’s hard for many Christians to wrap their heads around the idea of hell. How could a just and loving God create a place of eternal torment and torture? To...
The Catholic canon of the Bible contains 73 books. Three of them bear women’s names: Ruth, Judith, and Esther. These three texts also make the actions of women...
On October 31, 2016, the same day Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door in 1517, the Lutheran World Federation began a yearlong commemoration...
Recent news about limbo kept us, well, in limbo. Is it in or out? To many, this issue had to do with the ability the church to modify its teaching. We tend to...
You may have seen the bumper sticker: “Eve was framed.” The biblical perspective on women is set at a rather low bar in the opening chapters of Genesis. Simply...
It looks like just another house on just another block in just another American neighborhood. Tidy hostas line the walkway to the front door, pretty wicker...