Just posted to our Web site a very helpful analysis of the role of the church in Cuba s evolution from Margaret E Crahan of Columbia University The March 2012 visit to Cuba of Pope Benedict XVI focused attention on the emergence of the Catholic Church as an influential actor in the island natio

This guest blog post comes courtesy of Msgr Charles Murphy former rector of the Pontifical North American College in Rome and presently diaconate director for the Diocese of Portland Maine He is the author of six books including Euchartistic Adoration Meditations on the Seven Last Words of Chr

Earlier today the Democrats amended their platform to include the word ldquo God rdquo after some contrived controversy on the right about the previously adopted ldquo secular platform rdquo The platform actually devotes an entire section to the importance of faith and religion in US society

American-born Rabbi Dov Lipman came bearing flowers and a message of peace but he left the Abbey of Latroun with rolled up sleeves and eau de turpentine after he felt moved to personally respond to anti-Christian graffitti that had been spray-painted on the walls of monastery on the occupied West B

Today on the 15th anniversary of the death of Mother Teresa David Van Biema writes on the ministry of the Missionaries of Charity in Latin America in our online Books amp Culture section Van Biema is the author of the illustrated biography Mother Teresa The Life and Works of a Modern Saint no

I have been thinking about the martyrs in the church rsquo s recent history mdash among them Martin Luther King Jr the Ursuline missionaries Jesuits and companions in El Salvador Dorothy Stang Oscar Romero mdash those people who you might say carried within them a bit of crazy a lot of courag