An old Italian woman once told me the only sin is not to be kind. It's a wise summary of the greatest commandment: to love the Lord with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself.

Catholicism can be as easy as that. Over the years as a...

A priest once told me one of his worst experiences as a celebrant was walking down the aisle to celebrate Mass and seeing all the mothers wearing corsages. It was only then that he realized it was Mother's Day. He had prepared his homily based on the readings of the...

Last Sunday the pastor told of three shepherds and a visitor who asked how the shepherd knew whose sheep were whose. The visitor saw one shepherd stand, call his sheep to follow and a group of them did. Then a second shepherd did the same with the same results. Then...

Kirsten Powers, a USA Today opinion writer, and Conor Friedersdorf, a staff writer at The Atlantic, proved their journalistic chops last week. The two writers challenged fellow journalists to give appropriate coverage to the horrific details of the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell in the City of Brotherly Love. The...

Word is that Dreamworks, a sub-studio of Disney, is about to make a movie on the Boston Globe's January 2002 investigative report on pedophilia and the Archdiocese of Boston. The series marked a tipping point in the Catholic Church's dealing with the problem of clergy sexual abuse of minors. The...

It amazes me when basic church teaching is received as if it were somethig brand new. This morning's New York Times brought the latest example with the headline: "Dolan Says the Catholic Church Should Be More Welcoming to Gay People." A glance at other media outlets finds similar news accounts....

Awake or not, many of us at baptism became ambassadors. Along with water and oil, we received a portfolio of privileges and responsibilities and a commission to spread the Gospel.

The portfolio demands a relationship with God and we have tools to nurture the relationship. Number one is prayer. It's...

Post on Facebook. Send a tweet. Less than a month before Ash Wednesday Pope Benedict XVI has called on Catholics to get into social media. He blesses the world of Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest and Facebook. He calls social media the new "agora," the "open public square in which people share...

Catholic schools are in vogue. Proof: You can buy a Catholic school uniform for an American Girl doll. In your favorite plaid. You can find them for Barbie too. All the best dressed dolls are sporting them. They're $25-$30 online.

However, though the dolls are going traditional,...

He was there.

Msgr. Robert Weiss, pastor of St. Rose of Lima Parish in Newtown, Connecticut, went quickly to the scene of the Dec. 14 school massacre. There were the bodies of 20 little children, six staff and the 20-year-old perpetrator who killed them and then himself.

And from...

With the push of a button, I sent a tweet to the pope at #AskPontifex, the new Twitter account the Vatican set up for Pope Benedict XVI. It's nice to go straight to the top. Kudos to the pope who saw that, even at 85 years of age, he has...

We're formed by those around us. As the National Religious Retirement Collection comes up (the collection is Dec. 8-9), I cannot help but think of the many religious who formed me.

Sister Patricia Newell was my fifth grade teacher and advised us students to name our...

With the election over, it's time for the nation to retake its noble position as the home of the brave. Certainly the next four years will mark a critical time for our nation, an opportunity to show our better selves after unprecedented political rancor. It's long been accepted the truth...

New Yorkers may seem hardened and cynical, but they can still take notice of miracles within their borders. Hence, their pride in having two new saints to their claim. The first, Kateri Tekakwitha, known as "the Lily of the Mohawks," lived her faith in the area of Amsterdam, a relatively...

Margaret Sullivan now wears the public editor hat at The New York Times and with a recent ombudsman column took on a huge media problem: False balance aka false equivalency. False balance reports are those that appear fair because they have two sides, except that one side reflects neither knowledge...

I've bought pizza, chaperoned dances, donated to annual appeals -- all fundraisers for Catholic schools -- and paid tuition. Which is why I am bent out of shape by an article on church finances in the Aug. 18 issue of The Economist. The article in the magazine that defines itself...

U.S. Catholics' satisfaction with bishops leaped from 51 to 70 percent in the last decade, according to the Pew Forum. That's impressive, though it is hard to imagine a lower point than 2002, when Catholics saw a flood of news on clerical sexual abuse of minors. To copy Queen Elizabeth's...

Serious people feel overwhelmed going into the 2012 election. Seeing many choices or none, some seek a rationale to stay home on Election Day, but to give in to such discouragement is political despair.

Fortunately, conscience can guide us, even when we don't know it. The voice of conscience can...

Two caveats for evangelizers, that is, those who spread the Gospel today: 1. Use social media and 2. Follow its rules. It's a new day in church work: the computer has replaced the pen, 15 minutes seems like eternity, and if you don't get your message out fast, the audience...

The July 4 closing of the Fortnight for Freedom at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington drew a standing-room-only crowd, a fact that stunned organizers given the holiday, intense heat and state of emergency situation around the District of Columbia due to power outages.