María Ruiz Scaperlanda In December 2016, Pope Francis officially recognised Fr Stanley Rother’s martyrdom, making him the first American-born martyr. In September 2017, he became the first male born in the United States to be beatified. How a 46-year-old diocesan priest from a small German farming community in Oklahoma came to live and die in…
Sincerity is the life blood of a robust spiritual life. It’s one of those good habits I call “worldly virtues,” meaning virtues essential for living a good life in the middle of the world – in this case, being honest about our weaknesses along with our strengths, our confusions along with our certainties. Honesty But…
The daily Office of Readings includes an excerpt from a homily by St Augustine, which may be a funny place to begin a film review. Nonetheless, I’m going to take an excerpt from it now: “What fresh sort of suffering, brothers, does the human race now endure that our fathers did not undergo,” the great…
Saint of the week If you’re at all like me, the distances the Gospel has reached constantly astounds you. This week’s saint, remembered and celebrated by the Church July 14, is a good reminder of that. Born in 1656, St Kateri Tekakwitha was the child of a Christian, Algonquin mother and a Mohawk father, both…
Mike Nelson We can learn much from Scripture and the teachings of the Church about the value of encountering those different from ourselves. Certainly, Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well (Jn 4:4-42), his dining in the tax collector’s home (Mt 9:10-17) and his parable about the good Samaritan (Lk 10:30-37) speak clearly about recognising…
Gretchen Crowe It’s easy for Catholics to take the rosary for granted. We tend to purchase them as souvenirs, or carry them around with us, or even wear them – but we forget the immense power that they have when we actually pray them. And that’s really too bad, because a devotion to the rosary…
It is a remarkable thing that arguably the most overtly spiritual director of the 1970s and ‘80s was a product of the decidedly atheist USSR. Andrei Tarkovsky imbued each film with a yearning for spiritual truths, even while cultural authorities policed films for such ‘subversive themes’. Two of Tarkovsky’s films make the Vatican’s 1995 list…
The myth that only religious can be saints is one that’s well and truly on its way to being busted, with the Church making a renewed effort to highlight the many, many people who’ve walked the path of holiness in many different forms of life. July 8, a missionary, married couple from the early Church…
Susan Hines-Brigger Ten years ago, I travelled to Assisi, Italy, on pilgrimage, to follow in the footsteps of St Francis. For days, we immersed ourselves in the words and actions of St Francis throughout his life. Of all the moments that resonated with me, though, there was one story that seemed especially challenging – both…
Emily Stimpson Chapman In Rome, the churches are legion. Little parishes and great basilicas alike meet travellers on every block of the ancient city, their facades mingling with shops and restaurants, apartments and ancient ruins. Although unique visions of beauty and faith greet all those who cross the thresholds of these churches, on the outside precious few…
Ruadhán Jones