US Catholic is devoting almost their entire current issue on the Vatican s apostolic visitation of women s religious communities including an extensive survey and an article entitled The Sisters of Mercy Are Not McDonalds nbsp And be sure to check out our piece by Francine Cardman in our issue

Here s an article I wrote for Slate com for Christmas Eve this year You may have more in common with the Mother of God than you think If nbsp card manufacturers still think of Mary as a fair-skinned beauty queen many Christians especially Catholics don t even think of her as human Mary exist

No that is not a fake headline nbsp Here s the story from the Associated Press in which the official Vatican newspaper praises Homer Marge Bart Lisa Little Maggie et al on the occasion of the show s 20th anniversary nbsp nbsp NB the praise of laughter L Osservatore Romano on Tuesday cong

As promised while the magazine nbsp moves into its biweekly schedule over the holidays i e Christmas and New Year s just so you don t think we re succumbing to creeping secularism we are offering you a surfeit of items in our online Culture section nbsp And since moviegoing is a popular pas

From the London Times The Vatican has defended its moves towards beatifying Pope Pius XII saying that they reflected the piety of the wartime pontiff and not his ldquo historical importance rdquo nbsp Pope Benedict XVI sparked anger among Jewish groups on Saturday by bestowing the title ldquo

Exciting news Archeologists have discovered nbsp the remains of nbsp first-century house in Nazareth from the time of Jesus s boyhood nbsp While there s no way of telling whether it s Jesus s Home as The New York Post with its typical ridiculousness reported today the find will help

Cathy Kaveny nbsp makes a good point over at Dotcommonweal Saints don rsquo t have to be perfect And in canonizing Pope Pius XII the Church really doesn rsquo t mean to endorse his approach to nbsp Nazism And in canonizing Pope John Paul II the Church really doesn rsquo t mean to endorse his h

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. And it's starting to bug me just a little bit.

Lots of news from the Congregation of the Causes of the Saints today Pope John Paul II has been declared Venerable which nbsp had nbsp been nbsp expected for some time nbsp So has Pope Pius XII which was not expected though is not nbsp terribly surprising given the comments coming from the V

As a companion piece to the Of Many Things nbsp this week here s a nbsp briefer and more business-oriented op-ed in The Wall Street Journal today called Merry Marketing which takes aim at corporations who use and abuse religious themes in their Christmas sorry holiday campaigns nbsp Happi