As humanity grows in knowledge, it’s possible that we will forget the humbling and essential role of mystery in life, writes Jason Osborne Existence itself is a mystery, so it should come as no surprise that our lives are full of mystery too. By the grace of God, we Catholics know a great many things…
Given the content of most horror films, it’s not always a genre easily squared with the Catholic tradition. However, there is one horror film on the Vatican’s list of 45 significant films – Nosferatu (1922). The film is director FW Murnau’s unauthorised adaptation of Dracula and an important trend-setter in the realm of horror cinema.…
“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire,” our saint of the week is regularly quoted as saying. St Catherine of Siena certainly lived according to that maxim, so much so that not only is she a saint, she’s recognised as an esteemed ‘Doctor of the Church’ and…
The Wisdom of Pope Benedict XVI Without God man neither knows which way to go, nor even understands who he is. In the face of the enormous problems surrounding the development of peoples, which almost make us yield to discouragement, we find solace in the sayings of our Lord Jesus Christ, who teaches us: “Apart…
It might seem an obvious thing now, what with so much talk about the environment and “going green,” but humans have taken many approaches to the natural world throughout history. Sometimes, even when we talked a good game, our actions belied that we viewed the created world as something to be plundered, used and abused,…
There’s a saying attributed to Attila the Hun, a fifth Century ruler infamous for his cruelty, which reads this way: For me to be happy, it’s not just important that I succeed; it’s also important that everyone else fails. I suspect that Atilla the Hun was not the author of that, but, no matter, there’s…
Deacon Greg Kandra April 30, 2023, Fourth Sunday of Easter Acts 2:14a, 36-41 Ps 23: 1-3a, 3b4, 5, 6 1 Pt 2:20b-25 Jn 10:1-10 Most of us would probably admit: we don’t know a lot of shepherds. (Where I live, in Queens, New York, they are pretty scarce.) But I met one a few…
Learning to live and celebrate this Easter season confers many benefits on us, writes Jason Osborne Many of us are better at being penitential than we are at celebrating, unfortunately. As Pope Francis said way back in 2013, “sometimes these melancholic Christians’ faces have more in common with pickled peppers than the joy of having…
The Vatican’s 1995 list of significant films is very eclectic, catholic with a small ‘c’ (meaning broad and open minded). If one theme emerges strongly from the panoply, however, it’s the damage caused by war and the importance of human fraternity. I suppose it should hardly come as a surprise – many of those who…
Most of us are familiar with that famous image of a heavenly knight plunging his spear into a serpentine creature, even if we’re not overly familiar with the mysterious hero it represents. That would be St George, who is venerated far and wide to this day, despite the lack of concrete detail we have on…
Ruadhán Jones
Fr Ronald Rolheiser