Pope Francis said Wednesday that the Holy Spirit unites and grows the Church despite human limitations, sins and scandal. “The Holy Spirit is the creator of communion, the artist of reconciliation ... He builds the community of believers by harmonizing the unity of the body and the multiplicity of its members,” Pope Francis said June 19 in St...

Well, Happy Birthday to James Paul McCartney, who was born this day in 1942 and grew up to be one half of what became arguably the greatest songwriting partnerships in popular music. What a gift he had, to seemingly exhale melodies. What a remarkable, innovative bass player, to boot. What unforgettable harmonies — so tightly wound...

Roughly a year after Amazon announced its plan to create a series based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Netflix revealed plans to create a series and feature films based on the world of C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. Ever since the announcement was made on October 3, 2018, various speculations have been made. To help you sort through them all...

In April, it was discovered that one of Rosica’s most controversial publications, a July 2018 blog post, had been plagiarized from a 2014 blog post by by Richard Bennett, a former member of Dominican Order and an apparently laicized priest, who is now active in a fundamentalist Protestant organization which says it “places particular emphasis on the evangelization and conversion of Roman Catholics...

I love the early summer liturgical “trifecta” of Pentecost, Trinity, and Corpus Christi, forming a kind of “encore” to the joyful Easter Season focusing in succession on three fundamental realities of the Christian life: the Church, the Triune Godhead, and the Eucharist. This “trifecta” comes to an end this week with the celebration of the Body and Blood of Christ...

The lengthy New York Times obituary for the Franco Zeffirelli features lots of material — as it should — about the legendary director’s off-stage and off-screen private life, which was colorful, to say the least. The headline proclaimed: “Franco Zeffirelli, Italian Director With Taste for Excess, Dies at 96.” Zeffirelli lived a sprawling...

Despite the rumors in social media, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is doing very well and did not suffer a mild stroke, according to the Holy See Press Office. The reports first appeared on Twitter Monday afternoon, leaving many Catholics offering prayers for the 92-year-old pope emeritus.

On June 17, an independent tribunal which has been investigating "forced organ harvesting" from Chinese prisoners, including Falun Gong practitioners and Uighur Muslims, published its final judgment. The China Tribunal concluded that "forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale...

Every so often, we get official confirmation of the obvious, and, surprisingly enough, it still makes waves. Such is the case again this week with the release of a preparatory document for an October summit of bishops on the Amazon, which confirms that the ordination of married “elderly people,” meaning men, will be on the agenda...

Earlier today Cdl. Dolan of New York tweeted: “With the clear and cogent clarification of the successor of St. Peter, there now exists no loophole to morally justify capital punishment.” The supposedly clear and cogent clarification that Dolan has in mind must be Pope Francis’ 2018 modification of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to assert that the death penalty is “inadmissible”...

Following the successful cooperation on the 2016 restoration of the Edicule in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the leaders of the three churches who serve as guardians of the holy site have signed an agreement to continue with restorations, this time on the pavement and foundations around the tomb. The Edicule shrine is revered by Christians as the site of the remains of the cave where Jesus was buried and rose from the dead...

This is the last video showing the construction of the New World Record Penny Pyramid, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. This beats the previous record, which used 100 people and was built in Lithuania.

June 17 is my parents’ 58th wedding anniversary. Since I’ve been around for all but 10 of those years, I consider myself somewhat of an expert on their marriage. So first, I’d like to say: Congratulations, Mom and Dad! And I’d like to offer an observation about marriage and how it can affect children. At the start of every day...

So, how was Heresy Sunday at your parish? Maybe you know it better as “Trinity Sunday,” but, well, you know. One minute, you’re standing there sweating behind the pulpit, trying to give your flock something solid to chew on, and then next minute, you’re a modalist. Or an arian, or a partialist. On the other hand, you also have people complaining on Twitter that they’re pretty tired of hearing from their pastors that they’re just too dumb to understand the trinity...

A young Polish priest who was ordained last month following a terminal cancer diagnosis has died, his community announced Monday. Father Michal Los, FDP, died June 17 in the morning, the Congregation of the Orionine Fathers said in a Facebook post. “We believe that he met with the Risen Christ whom he so desperately wanted to serve as a priest...

Every day since I was 15 years old, I have taken “the Pill,” a pale-pink tablet containing a combination of levonorgestrel and ethinyl estradiol, two chemicals that trick my body into thinking it’s pregnant so I can’t actually get pregnant. Since it came on the market in 1960, the Pill — a catchall term for a variety of oral contraceptives containing differing combinations of synthetic hormones — has been the most common form of birth control used in the United States...

The working document for the special assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazonian region, released Monday, recommends study of the possibility of ordaining married men in remote areas for the priesthood. “Stating that celibacy is a gift for the Church, we ask that, for more remote areas in the region, study of the possibility of priestly ordination of elders...

When the U.S. Catholic bishops gathered for their semi-annual meeting last week, the burning outsider question was what steps they would take to combat the clerical sexual abuse scandals that are once again scarring the Church in America. For insiders, however, that question took on a highly specific focus: Would anyone finally sit in Ted McCarrick’s chair...

Whenever pro-life policies advance, such as the fetal “heartbeat” bill in Georgia, the protection of children conceived by rape in Alabama, and the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) defunding of fetal tissue in research, the same old pro-choice slogans pop up again in the media: “My Body, My Choice!” “Parasites Don’t Have Rights...

St. Paul made several journeys around the Mediterranean, preaching the Gospel. According the Acts of the Apostles, he was shipwrecked on the island of Malta. In some translations, such as Ronald Knox’s, though, the place is referred to as Melita. Though Maltese are proud of their connection with the Apostle to the Gentiles, one scholar is calling into question whether St...