There are several quickly published Pope Francis books on the market right now attempting to tell the story of how we came to have the first Hispanic, Jesuit, southern hemisphere pope. None could be called biographies, but Thomas J. Craughwell's "Pope Francis: The Pope from the End of the Earth"...

What a first day Pope Francis has had! Every signal he has sent thus far shows that this priest intends something new for the Catholic Church. It feels once again that a pope is about to let fresh air run through every aspect of the Church. He may...

As we all well know, the Vatican released a written statement on Feb. 11, 2013 that Pope Benedict XVI had read the evening before in Latin to a specially gathered consistory at the Vatican. It was then quickly translated into seven languages. This is what he said:

After having...

I woke up last Monday to the news and was as shocked as everyone else. At least for the first few seconds.

By 10:30 a.m. I was sitting in the offices of CBS News in Chicago, being interviewed by their chief correspondent, Jay Levine, for the evening news. He...

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite national holiday because gratitude is so easy to understand. Set aside a day for being thankful. Even -- or especially -- as a child, that has always made sense to me.

But the day after Thanksgiving celebrated with frenetic shopping, now, that I've...

There have been bad popes, to be sure. I don't mean "bad" in the sense that they performed their duties badly, but "bad" in that they clearly were not good people. Even -- or especially -- conservative Catholic historians will tell you this.

But it's been a long time since...

My wife and I recently moved from a village in Vermont to Evanston, Ill. We now live in a diverse neighborhood, half a mile north of the Chicago city line, and we're enjoying it. We deliberately wanted to trade idyllic beauty for the energy and opportunities of a real city.

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...