Video: Things got really weird at San Bernardino’s synod opening Mass last week. And was that the Aztec demon Texcatilpoca beating on the drum?

Bartimaeus was a man who saw by hearing...
Msgr. Charles Pope
In today’s gospel there is a very familiar story of the healing of the blind man Bartimaeus. As with any familiar story, the danger is that we, upon hearing its opening lines say, “Oh that story,” and we just sort of tune out. But there are many things in the details of the story that we can easily miss. Ultimately the story of Bartimaeus is also our story...

Christians pray, fast for release of 17 missionaries kidnapped in Haiti...

Seminary allegations, St. John Paul II, and a failure to communicate...
Ed Condon
Happy Friday, friends — and especially a happy feast of St. John Paul II. Like a lot of Catholics of my age, JPII remains a central reference point for my life in the Church. He was the pope who exhorted us to be saints at World Youth Day, he was the author of encyclicals which shaped our first intellectual encounters with the faith, and his was the name said at Mass for the first two decades of our lives.

The unlikely link between the Islamist murder of a Catholic British MP and the conversion of an ex-Anglican bishop...
Fr. Raymond de Souza
“While it is often said that good can come out of someone’s death, it is difficult to see what good can come from this senseless murder.” So wrote Sir David Amess, the British Member of Parliament stabbed to death while meeting his constituents on Oct. 15. He was not writing about himself, of course, but of the murder of another MP, Jo Cox, in 2016. But the words apply all the more to Sir David who, by universal and multiparty consensus, was the best of the British parliamentary tradition.

Vatican census shows Catholicism growing everywhere but Europe...

As St. Bernard of Clairvaux said, every pontificate has its courtiers. The current one is no exception. Quite the opposite...
Archbishop Charles Chaput
Bernard of Clairvaux, the great 12th-century saint and Doctor of the Church who renewed the Western monastic tradition, once warned that “The most grievous danger for any pope lies in the fact that, encompassed as he is by flatterers, he never hears the truth about his own person and ends by not wishing to hear it.” St. Bernard’s words came easily to mind as I read a recent Austen Ivereigh article for America magazine. In it, Ivereigh claimed that...

Hard spiritual truths that will set us free...

Why is this so hard to understand?

Paul McCartney explains how the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” came to be...

But love, first learned in a lady’s eyes...
John Cuddeback
It has been said that woman specializes in loving. There is a profound truth in this. It is not that men do not know how to love or are not called to love. But women, especially in their universal call to motherhood, exemplify a root feature of true love: affirming a person for who he is. Some might think that saying woman specializes in loving is a throw-away line. I disagree. The facts on the ground suggest otherwise.

This 3D visualization lets you see how California’s Dixie Fire created its own weather...

8-month-old baby among 17 Protestant missionaries kidnapped and held for $17 million ransom in Haiti, charity says...

Liechtenstein archbishop opts out of synodal process, saying it runs “the risk of becoming ideological”...

Have you ever received fake messages from your “priest?” Internet scammers see churches as easy prey, simple precautions can provide enormous protection...
Peter Jesserer Smith
Father David Mullen got the message every pastor dreads to hear thanks to 21st-century technology: “I think someone hacked your account.” An internet scammer had breached the Boston Archdiocese’s priests’ account back in August, looked at the content of his emails, and then proceeded to email people in his address book saying he needed to talk with the recipient “about something personal.”

16 tips to improving your parish hospitality...
Marcel LeJeune
Every parish has visitors, but not every visit is the same. Are your visitors having a positive experience? Will they come back? Do they feel welcomed? How is our hospitality to these visitors? Think of the last time you visited another parish for the first time. Did you know where to park? Did you find your way around easily?

Peru’s ‘Lord of Miracles’ carried in massive five-hour procession from St. Patrick’s Cathedral through the streets of New York City...