The First Mass took place in a small Eastern Kansas farming community its citizens equally divided between Catholics and Mennonites I was there as the vocation director for the Diocese of Dodge City which Fr Jim the newly ordained had joined while working in the western part of the state A

Grandma Klein took milk in her coffee My parents drank theirs black I remember fetching milk for her from our fridge and her saying ldquo I like a little coffee in my milk rdquo That was the afternoon that I asked her how she had met my grandpa I was in junior high school My grandfather

Ironically one can learn a lot about what it means to be human from the teaching of St Thomas Aquinas on angels Consider for example a contrast the angelic doctor draws between angels and humans Every human being is an individual member of what Aristotle called the human species but St Thoma

The Kansas State Capitol Building is the prettiest in the nation especially when the petunias are in bloom Most Kansas school children visit it my class was no exception The French Renaissance architecture of the exterior is memorable but the John Steuart Curry murals within depicting Kansas h

The sacrament of confession has seen profound changes through the centuries It began with sinners confessing grave sins in front of the bishop and the assembled congregation and then often receiving a life-time of penance During the Middle Ages confession metamorphosed into spiritual direction f

Garrison Keillor rsquo s A Christmas Blizzard lies within the tradition of Charles Dickens rsquo s A Christmas Carol the metamorphosis is something of a miracle nbsp Here rsquo s how its protagonist James Sparrow a wealthy Chicago CEO learns that he will be spending Christmas a holiday he rea

As celebrity memoirs go Diane Keaton rsquo s Then Again is unique for three reasons It rsquo s reflective it was actually written by her and it gives voice to not one but two women Diane and her mother Dorothy Keaton explains how it is that we hear two voices in her biography nbsp While Di

In his new novel Lost Memory of Skin Russell Banks wants to disturb us and with a disturbing subject sex offenders No attempt is made to exculpate these men but Russell does want his readers to do what many in society today refuse to do He wants us to see these offenders as men mdash faile

In his new novel Lost Memory of Skin Russell Banks wants to disturb us and with a disturbing subject sex offenders No attempt is made to exculpate these men but Russell does want his readers to do what many in society today refuse to do He wants us to see these offenders as men mdash failed s

According to Time Magazine ldquo There was a hand-scrawled sign on the fence post of a cross-roads farm come in for coffee and cake rdquo It was a Yuletide invitation Doesn rsquo t seem all that strange until one learns that the Yule in question was seventy years ago this month and that the p