Jon M. Sweeney

March 18 marked the 800th anniversary of the founding of the Poor Clares, the second of the Franciscan orders. Eight hundred years ago that day the 18-year-old Chiara Favorone, whom we now know as Clare of Assisi, went to church in the morning with her family. It was...

So, here I am in Brooklyn this week, with the opportunity to go to mass on Ash Wednesday morning at a nearby progressive Catholic parish, an opportunity not afforded to me in my little village in Vermont. Ash Wednesday is, of course, the beginning of the season of Lent and...

Popes don't just quit, do they? They are elected for life.

In fact, there is only one precedent in history of a pontiff who willingly walked away from his job. In 1294, Pope Celestine V was elected by the College of Cardinals, ruled for 15 disastrous weeks, and then...

The world's first "megachurch" -- defined as a church with weekly worship attendance of 2,000 or more, a charismatic founder and leader, a top down authority structure, a tendency to draw members away from other churches, and sustained power and influence in a community -- did not originate in 1950s...

If you pay any attention to ads this time of year, you might think the holidays are made exclusively for satisfied husbands and doting wives, children who always try their best in school and always come home at the end of the day, and families that are healthy, wealthy and...

I find that I'm only able to put my spirituality into practice when I am willing to enter into what I find to be most strange. This happened when I used beads, icons and special feast days of saints that are precious to me to help me in prayer. Most...

Have you ever seen Saint Francis smile? Neither have I, and that's unfortunate because, according to his biographers, he was one of the most joyous of men.

Francis was the merry leader of a band of brethren who were self-named, "God's jugglers," as they worked and played and sweat...

On Sunday, Oct. 2, churches around the world will celebrate something that St. Francis of Assisi started almost 800 years ago: blessing our animals. It was Francis who first introduced the idea that human beings are only one of a myriad of creations of God and all are blessed in...

A tweet from Gaga herself proclaimed her new album, Born This Way, released in May, "the anthem for our generation." Well, she is at least a phenomenon of this generation.

The songs are an eclectic mix of Americana manifesto-like intonations behind loud industrial beats, risqué techno dance music, '80s-style...

Why do I pray?

Not because I believe that God grants favors to people because they pray, or to those who pray the most fervently. If that were so, I can only imagine what would happen when Ole Miss plays the Crimson Tide in college football in October in Oxford...

I once knew a monk named Ambrose. He lived in Georgia. Ambrose would sit in his cell each morning before dawn writing a daily journal of thoughts to God. Sometimes he would mail me copies of stuff he thought I'd find meaningful. He was always right on the mark.

In...

In days such as these, in the midst of Holy Week and Passover both, I have to keep reminding myself to live and love the mysteries of faith -- rather than always trying to explain them.
The questions never cease. There's no virtue in pretending that all is clear...

You don't burn them. You never, ever burn them.

An unwanted holy book, be it Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or any other scripture, can be disposed of humanely and appropriately, but not burned.

A holy book is afforded the same respect as a human being in every religious tradition in...

It is amazing how quickly the beloved Pope John Paul II seems to have faded from public memory. Six years after his death (on April 2, 2005), it is difficult to find many people talking about his life and legacy anymore.

There have been a couple of made-for-television movies...

Some people are bound together by faith. They believe the same things, and say so, and that connects them. Like saying the creed in church. Or agreeing about certain spiritual truths. Or sharing the same initiation or race or ritual.

But the world is a complex place. We're intimately...

You may have heard that 2011 marks the 400th anniversary since the original publication of the King James Bible. So what? The KJV (King James Version) is not simply a Bible, it is the Bible that has influenced the English-speaking world more than any other.

There are, however, several...

There are undeniable trends in the world of faith today, each leading to places that we may or may not appreciate. As one who makes his living in the field of religion, participates in two different religious traditions on a regular basis, and passionately studies what's happening among the spiritually...