The two most recent selections by the Catholic Book Club couldn't have been more different: A look at Thomas Jefferson's quixotic attempt to rewrite the Bible, and Niall Williams's richly evocative novel about a small village in the west of Ireland.

From 1846 to 1848, in the worst years of the potato famine in Ireland and during mass emigration to the United States, one of the toughest units of the Mexican armed forces battling the invaders from "El Norte" was the Saint Patrick Battalion, known in Mexico as the 'San Patricios.'

The death of cultural icon Lawrence Ferlinghetti on Monday reminds us of the many artists and writers he influenced and was influenced by—including Thomas Merton.

Before Rush Limbaugh, there was the notorious “radio priest” of the 1930s and 1940s, Father Charles E. Coughlin.

No matter how many times you hear it described thus—jokingly or not—an annulment is not just “Catholic divorce.” Church teaching is not that the marriage in question failed, but that the marriage never existed in a sacramental sense.

Amid the somber ceremonies, perhaps today we can wave goodbye to our starchy past.

Who were some of the U.S. Catholics who were regularly in the news this past year?

John le Carré, who died earlier in December, was a wildly popular spy novelist—and one of the English world’s finest fiction writers of the last half-century.

A Reflection for the Third Wednesday of Advent

With no small bit of swagger, we present to you: Catholics who were Time’s Person of the Year.