For many Catholics, the word missionary brings to mind a centuries-old image of a priest planting a cross in a foreign land and teaching, baptizing and celebrating Mass for its people. Or it may conjure up the slightly more modern image of women religious running a school in Africa or Latin America.

Saints and theologians, not to mention authors and poets, have long debated this thorny question: Why did Judas do it? To answer that we need to know something about the man himself.

A New Testament Scholar demystifies the newly popular Gnostic text.

The Catholic Church is not, as many old hands in the Vatican are quick to say, a democracy. But that quick judgment may arise in part because those old hands have not sufficiently come to terms with modern democracy itself. The chapter titled Political Community in the Vatican’s recently publi

There are so many mistaken notions about St. John of the Cross (1542-91) that we might do well to clarify some of them.

I had planned to stay a few months, but was pretty quickly hooked and remained for five years - the last five years of Dorothy’s life, as it turned out.