Peter Manseau, the curator of American religious history at the Smithsonian, offers his definitive description of Thomas Jefferson’s eclectic efforts to remake the Bible in the Catholic Book Club’s latest selection.
History
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
Ita, Maura, Dorothy, Jean: The legacy of 4 missionaries murdered in El Salvador 40 years ago
The four churchwomen chose to stay and to suffer, as St. Romero had once said, “the same fate as the poor.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Los Angeles: a city of faith, beauty and pain
A longtime historian of Los Angeles explores and deconstructs the mythical city of boosters, developers and “perpetual reinvention.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Ideas
When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (maybe) spoke with the dead
‘The root of Spiritism…is the diseased moral condition of the age,’ one Catholic author wrote.
Posted inFaith, Features
A Jesuit guide to pandemic ministry
Does canceling the sacraments show a lack of faith? Jesuits in the 16th century didn’t think so.
Posted inExplainer, Politics & Society
Explainer: Has it always taken this long to count every vote? Yes and no.
There is nothing unprecedented in recent decades about close presidential elections—in fact, they’re almost always close these days—and there is also nothing new in a delay in finding out the winner.
Posted inFaith, Faith and Reason
What Abraham Lincoln found reading the Book of Job amid civil war
What role does religion have to play for a leader facing his darkest hours? In the midst of civil war, in the valley of despair, Abraham Lincoln grappled with this question.
Posted inArts & Culture, Television
‘The Good Lord Bird’ Review: Ethan Hawke’s John Brown is a (heavily armed) holy fool
‘The Good Lord Bird’ runs straight to the heart of America’s most toxic contradictions.
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
A church in Rome has over 3,000 skeletons on display. They give a chilling—but hopeful—reminder about death
All Souls is not just a remembrance of those we have lost, whether to death or to time. All Souls is a remembrance that beyond this world, there is more to come.
Posted inExplainer, Faith
Explainer: Where did Halloween come from—and should Catholics celebrate it?
Halloween’s roots lie deep in pre-Christian rituals—but also in the long heritage of All Saints Day.