My mother, Gerardine Ann Frawley, a former publisher of the Register, was just 21 when she began her life-long devotion to St. Martin de Porres. And though the 17th-century mixed-race Dominican from Peru and the Canadian-born child of Irish immigrants would appear to have little in common, St. Martin offered “Gerry” great comfort during some of the darkest moments of her life. The story begins in 1945...

When St. Paul talked about the resurrection of the dead with the philosophers at Athens, many laughed and mocked him . The Gospel, he would later write, is “foolishness” to the wise of this world. Yet this week’s First Reading tells us that it is foolish to think that the souls of the just are dead. Instead, theirs is a “hope full of immortality. ”By His Resurrection, Jesus frees the human race from the fear of death, from the terrible fear of the unknown...

It has been said, purportedly by G.K. Chesterton, that when people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing but in anything. Even worse is that the things which people believe are not merely godless but deadly and demonic. Take, for instance, the modern anti-Christian creeds that led to the French and Russian Revolutions and to the rise of the Nazis...

Next week is the USCCB Fall Plenary Assembly. I am not making any predictions about what kind of session it will be this year because, frankly, I really do think it could go either way. The bishops are due to convene for the first time under the Leonine pontificate — in which the first American pope has already made it abundantly clear he takes a dim view of publicly fractious exchanges...

Archbishop Alexander Sample has been elected chairman of the US bishops’ Committee for Religious Liberty after an unusual tie in the conference vote. The plenary meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops delivered an unexpected moment when the routine election of a committee chair ended in an extraordinary stalemate.

The bishops of the United States elected a new conference president and vice president from among their number Tuesday morning. The selection as president of Oklahoma City’s Archbishop Paul Coakley, erstwhile secretary of the conference, was widely predicted. Following a recent run of vice presidents ineligible to go on to serve as president because of age, the secretary position had become the de facto new poll position from which to run for the top office.

Sixty five thousand people gathered last summer in Indianapolis for the National Eucharistic Congress — the culmination of the Church’s three-year National Eucharistic Revival. Leaders heralded it a roaring success. But the bishop who organized the Eucharist Congress said that the next one, set for summer 2029, will be “bigger and better” than the Church’s 2024 gathering.

Already Plato used bodily health as a helpful analogy for understanding health of the soul. The entire complex realm of cultivating and restoring bodily health is rife with truths applicable to spiritual health, which two healths, of course, while distinct are not unconnected. Calling a physician for help at the appropriate time is a significant aspect in both...

Within the walls and corridors of an academic institution that proposes to convey and reaffirm the teachings of the Catholic Church, prudence would dictate that the institution's teachers be consistent in their articulation and dissemination of the Catholic faith. Even more, it would be imperative that anyone charged with echoing the teachings of Jesus Christ be acutely aware of the responsibility to deliver a clear message of both the Gospel of Christ and its content, the Creed. Hence, any teacher would champion the importance of clarity and fidelity to the Christian message conveyed to students to avoid any spiritual or moral confusion...

It is the age between our Lord’s first coming and His last. We live in the new world begun by His life, death, Resurrection, and Ascension, by the sending of His Spirit upon the Church. But we await the day when He will come again in glory. “Lo, the day is coming,” Malachi warns in today’s First Reading. The prophets taught Israel to look for the Day of the Lord, when He would gather the nations for judgment (see Zephaniah 3:8; Isaiah 3:9; 2 Peter 3:7). Jesus anticipates this day in today’s Gospel...