Every human and community experiences social maladies. American culture has long displayed symptoms of these pathologies—and American Christianity along with it. From susceptibility to conspiracy theories, vulgar aesthetic taste, avarice, smugness, partisanship, indifference to human suffering: Christians often showed themselves as spiritually unprepared as everyone else. Our imaginations need rescue, …

If the myth of Narnia has suffered from anything since The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe published in 1950, it’s that adult Christian readers who love Narnia tend to draw out the analogies, lessons and “morals” of its stories. But as Father Michael Ward warns early in the recent …

The saints are alive and present to us; they desire to be with us and to accompany us on our pilgrimage through this vale of tears. Yet they often feel distant, in part because we have lost that sense of mystery in our world. As a friend often says, when …

When I homeschooled my children, I came across proposals for curricula that indicated boys could pursue ideas (abstract thinking, maybe STEM and carpentry), while girls should only be trained up for domestic roles (the domestic arts and devotional religion). I always asked myself: Don’t women have minds too, and shouldn’t …

Rick Brandell, a member of St. Maximilian Kolbe parish in Liberty Township, was inspired to write a children’s book about faith while praying the Rosary one day. He mulled over that seed of inspiration for six months before deciding it was time to act. “The idea was that I should …

I’m usually allergic to titles like “Becoming Eucharistic People.” While the title is beautiful, as with a nice spring flower, I have an instinctual adverse reaction against it. Why? Because I’ve often seen such titles on shelves headlining handfuls of dust. What in the world does the adjective “Eucharistic” even …

No experience is quite as difficult as being misunderstood. Who we are as persons—belonging to a wider group of people—is tightly intertwined with our ability to communicate. When we are misunderstood, it is not simply frustration at some technical breakdown; instead, something more fundamental about us is brought into question. …

Kevin Schmiesing’s new book, A Catholic Pilgrimage Through American History, demonstrates that you cannot go far along the highways and byways of the U.S. without stumbling upon a site important to both the Catholic faith and our nation’s history. Dr. Schmiesing, who hails from Sidney, OH, explores the Catholic dimension …

Nobel-Prize winning Norwegian novelist Sigrid Undset seems to have garnered more attention in the past year than she did in the prior decade, thanks to new translations of her work by Tiina Nunnally, the reissuing of Undset’s lesser- known works by Cluny Media and a handful of books on Undset …

As recently as 10 years ago, very few people expected that we would have serious public debates in 2022 about what pronouns to use for people; whether public schools could be compelled to allow boys to use girls’ restrooms; if 14-year-old children should be permitted to have mutilating surgery on …