James Martin, S.J.

Word has reached us that Jon Hassler has died at his home in Collegeville Minn at the age of 74 One of the great novelists of our time his books including North of Hope Staggerford Dear James and Grand Opening examined with infinite compassion the lives of the re

Sending out hundreds of Easter cards this year Attending way too many Easter parties Doing some last-minute shopping for gifts to place under your Easter tree Getting tired of all those Easter-themed specials on television I didn t think so How does Easter resist the commercialism tha

It was just a few weeks ago that I blogged about this but I wanted to celebrate today March 18 the 50th anniversary of a great epiphany that changed the course of Thomas Merton s life After years of feeling separate from other men and women as a result of his choosing to live a monastic

I m not sure what I like the most the name of the website gloria tv their in-your-face slogan the more catholic the better their spokesnun she with the arbitrary binoculars the impressively multilingual comments Bei so sch nem Gesang wird die Fastenzeit richtig s or the mus

News has come of the murder of the Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul Paulos Faraj Rahho who had been kidnapped The Associated Press has this story AP And Catholic News Service is running this interview with an American-based Chaldean bishop who lays some of the blame for the outcome on the

One of the better blogs on things religious is Therese Borchard s Beyond Blue hosted by Beliefnet com Nominally it is about the topic of depression which Borchard had suffered from and also discussed in last week s America article Shadows in Prayer Shadows More broadly it i

Christ the Lord The Road to Cana Anne Rice s new novel received if not a rave review then a very positive one in The New York Times this morning Times review The book is a follow-up to Christ the Lord Out of Egypt her bestselling novel about the birth and childhood of Jesus That fi

As an example of how the media sometimes can get a story wrong or at least confuse things unnecessarily witness the story from the March 8 issue of L Osservatore Romano which included an entirely sensible interview with Bishop Gianfranco Girotto an official at the Apostolic Penitentiary on

More sartorial commentary Keith Pecklers S J has a provocative article in the latest London Tablet on Pope Benedict s return to some of the more formal vesture of the church Father Pecklers is Professor of Liturgy at the Pontifical Gregorian University and Professor of Liturgical History a