At a recent viewing of the film ldquo Into Great Silence rdquo I was mesmerized as the camera circled the austere perimeter of a new Carthusian novice rsquo s cell and oratory stripped of any comforts or signs of individuality And then there she was pasted to the wall near a bare cross a sma

"Señor, me has mirado a los ojos; sonriendo, has dicho mi nombre. (Lord, you have looked into my eyes; smiling, you have called my name.) So goes the refrain of one of the best known Latin American hymns, which poignantly expresses the core Christian belief: God loved us first. When you looked

In Blessed Among All Women Robert Ellsberg publisher of Orbis Books has compiled another unorthodox hagiography The book records the lives of 136 holy women Their stories eloquently told in short entries are grouped according to the virtues of the Beatitudes an arrangement that reflects Ells

In 1954 when the blockbuster horror movie Them hit the silver screen the young Barnard graduate and budding writer Francine du Plessix not yet married to the artist Cleve Gray was off in France Even if she hadn rsquo t been there was no way such a sophisticated intellectual with flawless Fre

What are we to make of a genius who states categorically that he believes in angels, the Fall, the Gospels and the spirit of God brooding over human historyyet whose faith eludes us even at his most candid? One of the world’s and Christianity’s great poets, Poland’s Czeslaw Milosz,

"They call me the Manhole Cover Lady,” says Diana Stuart, author of Designs Under Foot: The Art of Manhole Covers in New York City (Design Books, 2003). After attending her lecture on what might seem a curious topic, I spoke to her about her book and how she came to write it.Like most New

The most startling fact about Edwin O'Connor's life was its brevity The acclaimed author of such mid-century Irish and Catholic classics as 'The Last Hurrah' and 'The Edge of Sadness' seemed a fit and healthy man. Yet he died when he was just 49 in 1968.

Best known in the United States for his early films ldquo Diary of a Country Priest rdquo 1951 and ldquo The Trial of Joan of Arc rdquo 1962 Robert Bresson became known to the critical establishment as a ldquo Catholic rdquo filmmaker In this brief but comprehensive survey of the comple

I once had a spiritual director who told me that A Lent missed is a year lost from the spiritual life. Every year at this time, those words come winging back. And often my best Lenten devotion flows from reading. Here are a few reflective titles that seem worth mention for these 40 days.Philip Yance

By any estimate the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz must be reckoned among the most important writers of the 20th century Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980 professor of Slavic languages at the University of California at Berkeley for four decades freedom fighter for Poland in World War