Sigrid Undset’s writings were admired by everyone from Willa Cather to Dorothy Day. Her life is being studied by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. Who was this Norwegian teller of truths?
Faith
Posted inIdeas
The 1926 International Eucharistic Congress: When the Catholic Church triumphed despite gangsters, culture wars and the KKK
What can a divided country learn from this momentous gathering—in Pope Leo XIV’s hometown—which took place amid dizzying social change and the rise of the “new” Ku Klux Klan?
Posted inCatholic Movie Club
Peter Weir’s ‘Witness’: thriller, romance, story of faith
‘Witness’ is a taut crime thriller and a heart-racing romance. But it is also a portrayal of a community of faith.
Posted inShort Take
What Christians lose when we stop reading
What happens to the church when the people of the book no longer choose to read? We ignore this question at our own peril.
Posted inCatholic Movie Club
Cherishing truth amid lies: Peter Bogdanovich’s ‘Paper Moon’
Nearly everyone we meet in “Paper Moon” is running some sort of scam. With the truth so clouded in uncertainty, our protagonists (and the audience) have to choose who and what to believe.
Posted inBooks
Moderates and liberals stopped going to church. We’re only beginning to see the effects.
In ‘The Vanishing Church,’ Ryan Burge presents a data-driven picture of how the American religious and political landscapes have transformed together over the past 50 years.
Posted inIdeas
Rapper Jelly Roll spent years in and out of prison. Now he’s bringing his Gospel-inspired music behind bars.
Jelly Roll takes seriously the command of Jesus in Matthew 25: “I was in prison and you visited me.”
Posted inShort Take
Ross Douthat and the case for the Catholic lay intellectual
Ross Douthat’s greatest contribution has not been to conservative politics or even to Catholic debates. It has been to demonstrate that Catholicism remains an intellectually serious way of understanding the world.
Posted inIdeas
No one reads anymore. But you should if you want to be a good Catholic.
If we really are entering a postliterate culture, what does that mean for faith?
Posted inCatholic Book Club
Caryll Houselander: Britain’s ‘rocking-horse Catholic’ and bohemian disciple
The writings of Caryll Houselander, a mid-century British artist, poet and spiritual writer, remain for many a treasure trove of honest reflections on faith.