Phil Lombardi, Fr. Dan Andrews and three others began their Saturday morning at breakfast before their lives would change forever in October of 1990. During breakfast, Andrews asked the group if they wanted to go to the BC soccer game against Rockhurst that day. The group replied ‘yes’ and piled into Andrews’ 1973 Volkswagen van and set off to Kansas City, Missouri.

In a documentary that premiered Wednesday in Rome, Pope Francis called for the passage of civil union laws for same-sex couples, departing from the position of the Vatican’s doctrinal office and the pope’s predecessors on the issue.

Calling your chocolate chip cookie “perfect” is a bold move. But the British pastry chef Ravneet Gill had no problem doing it. So far, no one’s contested her claim.

A day after donning a face mask for the first time during a liturgical service, Pope Francis was back to his mask-less old ways Wednesday despite surging coronavirus infections across Europe and growing criticism of his behavior and the example he is setting.

I wonder what features were typical of ‘useless houses’ in Athens. Did they have the ancient equivalent of a state-of-the-art entertainment center dominating the family room, or a master bath big enough to host a luncheon? Was it that size, number, and arrangement of rooms did not reasonably correspond to real human life of the household community?

I have always been fortunate to know scientists who don’t confuse the domain of science with their own philosophical presuppositions. It is, after all, one of the most common—and probably the most absurd—of all contemporary secular claims that the physical sciences somehow disprove the existence of God...

Scientists have found a previously undiscovered organ deep inside the human head, where the nasal passages meet the back of the throat. Yes, the news is an extraordinary-sounding surprise, but the researchers say the discovery is likely a fourth pair of salivary glands—not a second brain or transistor radio...

One of the more interesting and surprising images the Lord used for Himself was “thief.” There is a reference to this in the first reading for this Wednesday of the 29th week of the year. Now, thievery suggests unjust possession. In this sense, the Lord is clearly not a thief; He is using a simile...

Sometimes it is hard to believe that saints were once flesh and blood: So often we see church statues of the blessed that look unreal. Harder still is it to recall that some of these saints had children and that today their descendants are living, breathing men and women. St. Gianna Molla is one such example. His Imperial Royal Highness Imre von Habsburg-Lothringen, archduke of Austria...

Do you remember the top bioethical topic of discussion in 2004? It was California voters approving a $3 billion bond for embryonic stem cell research. Now they are asking for even more money 16 years later. But despite promising all kinds of therapies 16 years ago, there is still no FDA-approved therapy using human embryonic stem cells.

By tradition, both the United States Senate and the College of Cardinals have been a sort of Country Club in which members, whatever their disagreements, treat one another with courtesy. That culture of civility disintegrated long ago in the Senate, and if Cardinal Joseph Zen has anything to do with, it may not be long-lived in the Church either...

Chaos reigns right now in my little county in the middle of upstate New York. For many months we were a blessed bubble of freedom from COVID-19. But now cases are rising quickly, and panic is setting in. Crime is up: yesterday a neighbor filmed a man stealing from cars and porches in the middle of the day. Drug use is up. And why not? A drug can seem like a logical answer, a way to escape the terror for a moment of sweet forgetfulness.

The Archbishop of Santiago de Chile condemned arson attacks that destroyed two Chilean churches Sunday, and called on Catholics to carry out acts of reparation for the attacks.

From Lionel Page on Twitter

From Visegrad 24 on Twitter

The widely beloved author and professor Tom Howard has gone on to his eternal rest. He rose to prominence in Evangelical circles in the late 1960s with his book Christ the Tiger (1967), then entered the Anglican Communion before he finally, as he explained, “read his way into the Catholic Church.” News of his becoming Catholic in 1985 was monumental enough to justify a three-part series analyzing it in Christianity Today, the flagship Evangelical magazine in North America...

“Dude, I want you to punch Donald Trump in the face.” During Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings, Democratic senator Cory Booker of New Jersey quoted a man who approached him at a town hall. “Dude, that’s a felony,” is how Senator Booker described his response...

Catholicism’s most prominent voice on China has defined a recent talk by Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, laying out the reasons for renewing a controversial 2018 deal on the appointment of bishops, as “sickening,” and accused Parolin of “lying with eyes open.”

If you want to sell a scandal story, there’s really nothing like having a femme fatale at the heart of it all. You might think pulling that off would be problematic in the Vatican, legendarily perceived as an all-male domain, yet such female characters never seem to be in short supply whenever a new meltdown erupts. What drove the second Vatileaks scandal in 2015-2016, at least in terms of media interest...

Over the years, in meeting especially with teenagers in Sunday School, I have used an old Jim Croce song to instruct them that worldly norms, and worldly leaders come and go. What is “hip” and cool today is considered silly and out of date tomorrow. My advice to them was to stay close to the Scriptures and teachings of the Church which are time-tested and do not change...