If we think the Benedict Option is going to be easier than the messy reality of modern parish life, we have not yet seen it clearly.

The continent ends the year much as it began: in disarray, devoid of any vision for the future and united in hardly any sense at all.

After two Christmas seasons in which the political reality had overtaken holiday cheer, people seemed primed to finally feel some merriment in Bethlehem.

They "pray, pray" that family members can get out of northern Iraq before a major Islamic State attack.

"Despite all divergences, we believe a political compromise is still possible," the bishops said in a Dec. 2 statement.

After one of my own teenage students was murdered, Emmett Till's grave became a place of occasional pilgrimage for me.