“The quality of homilies is almost unanimously reported as a problem.”
Catholic Identity
Posted inFaith, Short Take
Catholics: Stop using Jesus as a curse word—and speak up when others do too.
It is clear that most people think using Jesus’ name to express anger is acceptable. But this should not only be off-limits, it should be confronted as anti-Christian.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
A Catholic guide to Halloween reading
From Edgar Allan Poe to Dean Koontz to Flannery O’Connor, America’s editors and contributors are not (always) afraid of some horror.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Yes, J. F. Powers wrote about priests. But his real subject was America.
Powers’s chosen subjects—in cassocks or nay—are inevitably All-American, and his stories are careful studies of American mid-century life and ambition.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
God’s grump: The irascible Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh’s reputation has endured for almost a century as other novelists have fallen out of fashion. It wasn’t because everyone thought him a jolly fellow.
Posted inArts & Culture, Vantage Point
A portrait of Evelyn Waugh, Christian wayfarer
From 1993: The second volume of a biography of Evelyn Waugh occasioned John W. Donohue, S.J., to offer a survey of the great English Catholic writer’s life.
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
Northern Ireland census shows more Catholics than Protestants for the first time ever
For the first time ever, more people in Northern Ireland identify as Catholic than Protestant, 101 years after the jurisdiction was founded with a Protestant majority in mind.
Posted inFaith, Short Take
Jesus would have hung out in a dive bar—and not just to convert its patrons
A popular meme portrays Jesus as always judgmental, always making a sales pitch. But as a human being, he enjoyed friendship for its own sake.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
We live in the age of anti-heroes. But few can top John Kennedy Toole’s Ignatius J. Reilly.
John Kennedy Toole’s only novel was published after his death—but quickly became a classic of American comic fiction.
Posted inFaith, GoodNews
The joy of wearing Catholic socks
Starting with Pope Francis footwear in 2017, Sock Religious now makes and sells products honoring Mother Teresa, St. Ignatius, and all manner of Catholic heroes.