Catholic faithful do not “buy” Masses, but when a priest accepts an offering and promises to celebrate a Mass for that person’s loved one or other special intention he must do so, the Vatican said.
Faith
Posted inFaith, Last Take
R.I.P. Roger Freet, a man responsible for some of your favorite Catholic books
Some of your favorite books by Christian authors came to be because of the careful and loving assistance of Roger Freet, the editor and literary agent who died on March 18.
Posted inFaith, Podcasts
Podcast: A Catholic neuroscientist explains your brain on religion
The latest neuroscience will blow your mind, body and soul.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Ernest Hemingway’s simple, devotional and private Catholicism
Was Ernest Hemingway’s lifelong subject a study of saintliness? A new book on his religious faith provides ample evidence of that.
Posted inFaith, Last Take
I will forever be proud to call myself a student of Martin Marty
Martin Marty, a towering figure in the study of American Christianity, died last week. Joe McShane, S.J., one of his former graduate students, remembers him with gratitude.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: A priestly ministry on hockey skates
‘Hockey Priest: Father David Bauer and the Spirit of the Canadian Game’ shows the interplay of spirituality and sport in the world that Father Bauer helped create.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Philip Berrigan’s prophetic ire
‘A Ministry of Risk,’ a collection of the writings and speeches of the late Phil Berrigan (1923-2002), is a provocative anthology destined to leave most readers bewildered, challenged and perhaps even a little angry.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: ISIS killed her son. She met them face to face.
‘American Mother,’ Diane Foley’s and Colum McCann’s story of Foley’s life and that of her son, James Foley, is written with a mother’s love, her eventual understanding of hostage situations and her desire for others to understand the struggle she faced.
Posted inFaith, Faith and Reason
A neglected aspect of Ignatian spirituality: Becoming God’s instruments
The whole semantic field of ‘tool’ and ‘instrument’ is fraught with negative moral connotations. St. Ignatius’ writings , however, show a different tendency. There, ‘instrument’ both serves as a central spiritual category and bears a positive connotation.
Posted inFaith, Faith and Reason
The problem with JD Vance’s theology of ‘ordo amoris’—and its impact on policy
JD Vance tries to use Aquinas’s ‘order of love’ to support his political ideology, but is the ethical order he proposes actually consistent with the ethic of Aquinas or, more broadly, with the principles of Catholic social teaching?