VATICAN CITY – Interreligious dialogue can and must be about the cultural consequences of one’s faith, not about the basic fundamentals of one’s religious convictions, Pope Benedict XVI said.Read More
DAMASCUS, Syria – Refugees from Iraq are not going home any time soon, despite Iraqi government enticements, say church officials and others who work with the exiles in the Middle East.Read More
Six years ago, a mother in a remote corner of China laid her baby along a roadside and walked away. Suffering from a cleft palate and unable to nurse, the little girl was left alone for an unknown period of time before a passerby discovered the starving child and took her to an orphanage filled...Read More
Father Carl F. Cummings and Susan Banks couldn’t contain their glee. The pastor of Catonsville’s St. Agnes and its elementary school principal watched as the eighth grade girls’ basketball team became the first group to use the new $4 million parish center.Read More
Media outlets enjoy feedback – especially when it sheds light on a subject. In the Oct. 23 issue of The Catholic Review, a tribute to the School Sisters of Notre Dame included a photo of an unidentified member of the order. The day after publication, an e-mail arrived from Gerard A. Kreft, a parishioner of...Read More
WASHINGTON – A federal appeals court ruled Nov. 24 that a lawsuit can move forward against the Vatican involving three men who claimed to have been sexually abused when they were children by priests in the Archdiocese of Louisville, Ky.Read More
WASHINGTON – Officials from a variety of nongovernmental organizations have urged the United States to continue overseas development assistance despite the current global financial crisis.Read More
I recently returned to teaching high school in the Archdiocese of Baltimore after an absence of more than 30 years. The things that I have learned (and in some cases relearned) are as numerous as the challenges a teacher faces today.Read More
It happened several years ago, but the thought continues to bother me. John had made the comment at one of our group get-togethers. “Don’t mention those words ‘last time’ to me,” he said.Read More
Two evenings of fun, fellowship and blanket-making in the parish center of St. Mark, Catonsville, resulted in sending more than 130 fleece blankets to Soldier’s Angels (www.soldiersangels.org), an organization distributing blankets before Christmas to 180,000 deployed soldiers.Read More
Black Friday isn’t just a lucrative day for shopping malls. Christmas-minded consumers make the gift shop of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary a must-stop the day after Thanksgiving in Baltimore.Read More
I had a rather rotund friend in college who loved life, loved God and definitely loved food. He would often say as we ate in our cafeteria, “Food is God’s love made edible.” In fact, he even wrote his senior thesis on the relationship between food and theology (Banquet Feast of the Lamb, for example)....Read More