Why do so many Catholics still distrust Thomas Merton Forty years ago today Thomas Merton a Trappist monk and perhaps the most popular American Catholic writer in history stepped out of a bathroom shower during a visit to Bangkok Slipping on the wet floor he grabbed a poorly wired fan for supp

Cardinal George Pell the archbishop of Sydney Australia about to celebrate the Tridentine Mass in Rome on Dec 8 H T to orbiscatholicus blogspot and Robert Mickens James Martin SJ

This feast always makes me think of St Bernadette Soubirous nbsp As you ll remember the Virgin Mary appeared to her in one of the last apparitions at Lourdes and said in the local patois I am the Immaculate Conception nbsp This was in 1858 four years after Pope Pius IX had proclaimed

Last night I finished reading Paul Mariani s astonishing new biography Gerard Manley Hopkins A Life which we reviewed in a Bookings section of our magazine a few weeks ago nbsp It is simply extraordinary nbsp For many years the standard biography of Hopkins has been Gerard Manley Hopki

Lisa Miller a senior editor at Newsweek who oversees all the mag s religion reporting and does a great job at it has a cover story posted online today nbsp on what the Bible says and may intend and doesn t say about same-sex marriages and homosexuality in general nbsp The most surpris

Since lots of our readers are interested in this topic vis-a-vis our new president here is Russell Shaw writing about FOCA If you re up on this you ll know what it is If not get up on it In Our Sunday Visitor s blog nbsp the Daily Take nbsp Shaw former spokesman for the USCCB and

Here s a little piece at NPR org on the increasing popularity of the newest kind of Christmas card even among devout Christians the family card nbsp The other two are the religious card--Mary and Jesus nbsp And the secular card--snowmen and snowy villages You all know what I m talking ab

Guess who the Archdiocese of Brooklyn got to pitch their new television network New Evangelization Television to be available on the net too in a few weeks nbsp Our friend Greg Kandra over at The Deacon s Bench is part of this new venture which we hope will resist all of Satan s e

The Anchoress over at her blog has been welcoming people to an online vespers service in which she accompanies the listener through the church s evening prayer nbsp In this one she gives a little homilette nbsp It s another clever new way to pray online nbsp If St Paul were alive tod

The place of gay and lesbian Catholics in the church and in society has once again come to the fore during the nbsp furor over the status of same-sex marriages and civil unions both here and abroad nbsp Just today for example Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento nbsp weighed in saying that Prop