We experience the death of others—but not as they do. We only know that they are gone, and that fact alone is nigh impossible to comprehend.
Death and Dying
Posted inFaith, News
Benedict XVI yearns for heaven but is ‘absolutely full of joy for life,’ private secretary says
Benedict’s longing for heaven, recently hinted at in a letter of condolence, is not to be interpreted as meaning that the former pope “no longer has any desire to live.”
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI hopes to soon join his best friend in ‘the afterlife’
Retired Pope Benedict XVI has said he hopes to soon join a beloved professor friend in “the afterlife,” in a sign that the 94-year-old pontiff is not only accepting his eventual death but welcoming it.
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
When a Jewish hospital chaplain was asked to perform a Catholic baptism
If the baby was born alive and they waited for the priest to make it over to the hospital, they ran the risk that the baby might die before the priest arrived to perform the sacrament of baptism.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
The gift and challenge of love in Kirstin Valdez Quade’s ‘The Five Wounds’
‘The Five Wounds’ causes the reader pain. Call it compassion. Call it empathy. Call it the Christian experience of being heart-stretched.
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
I lost my baby and my father. But not my trust in God.
My parents instilled in me the lesson that no matter what life threw at me, God would always be there to guide me.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
The afterlife is having a moment. ‘Beyond’ will help Christians and nonbelievers alike discuss what lies beyond the grave.
With her new book ‘Beyond,’ Catherine Wolff mixes well-written impressionistic summaries of various religious perspectives with personal anecdotes to answer the age-old question of what lies beyond the grave.
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
A Mexican novena for the dead is transformed for the digital age by Covid-19
In Latin American immigrant communities, lay faith leaders adapt a ritual of mourning that builds community amid isolation.
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
The Assumption of Mary brought me peace after my mother’s death
I am told that at the last moment, my mother sat up, looked towards heaven and fell back to her pillow. I chose to believe Mary came to her, took her and is with her still.
Posted inFaith, News
The Catholic Church opposes composting human remains — but it’s becoming legal in more states
Washington, Colorado and Oregon are now among the U.S. states that have legalized the process of converting human bodies into soil, a procedure the Catholic Church said fails to show “respect for the body of the deceased.”