Centenarians are not as rare as they used to be and one can profit from their memories. In California I spoke with a woman who had traveled there from Missouri in a covered wagon. I visited another woman in a retirement home who was the first to hear her English professor at Wellesley College, Katherine Lee Bates, read a poem she had written on her summer vacation in Colorado: “America the Beautiful...

It was an unseasonably chilly night for June in Los Angeles. About three dozen people, mostly women in their 20s and 30s, were spending their Friday evening lying on yoga mats on the back patio of a shop a few blocks from Hollywood Forever Cemetery and the Paramount Pictures lot. Attendees had been invited to bring whatever they needed to make the space cozy: Blankets...

The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Thursday that a new Title X rule banning organizations in receipt of funds from co-locating with abortion facilities can go into effect. Planned Parenthood called the decision “devastating” and “crushing news.” The court refused to grant an emergency stay of its June 20 decision allowing the rule to be enforced...

He unveiled his plans Thursday on Twitter, saying he’ll be moving to Barcelona to become director of communications at IESE Business School. He’ll also be working for the Arise Foundation, fighting human trafficking. The Foundation confirmed Burke’s appointment on its website. Burke, you’ll recall, was director of the Holy See Press Office...

Can we as Catholics call Muslims our brothers and sisters? How about Jews? Other non-Christians? In what sense? This question, which came up recently in comments on my most recent homily, was raised a couple of years ago when a USCCB news release highlighted a joint statement of three bishops (the chairmen of the USCCB committees on interreligious affairs...

By Patti Armstrong | A Colombian bishop’s determination to exorcise a violent, crime-ridden city in his diocese by pouring holy water from the air, was executed instead by a fire engine. As reported by La República, Bishop Rubén...

One could easily reduce this Sunday’s Gospel to trite moral advice such as this: Help people in trouble; be kind to strangers. While these are certainly good thoughts, I would argue that it is about far deeper things than human kindness or ethics. This is a Gospel about the transformative power of God’s love and our need to receive it...

Did Fulton Sheen witness and cover up the sexual assault of a child? Less than a week after Sheen’s beatification was announced, Rebecca Bratten Weiss’ Patheos blog echoed recent chatter on Twitter, sharing text that alleges Sheen saw a priest sexually abusing a child. The text claims Sheen walked in as the abuse happened, but he merely told the priest to put his pants back on...

Music expert Rick Beato breaks it down...

On July 20, 1969, the world held its breath as astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin made the first steps on the moon. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of this landmark moment, we’ve curated a daily calendar of archival photographs that offer a rare and intimate glimpse at the mission and the global excitement it stirred...