Remembering a gentle shepherd murdered by militants

Today we remember Chaldean Father Ragheed Aziz Ganni, who, along with three subdeacons from Church of the Holy Spirit in Mosul, Iraq, were killed June 3, 2007, while leaving the church after Mass.

U.S. Catholics: overly assimilated?

Russell Shaw has become the bull in the china shop of U.S. Catholic history, knocking heroes off pedestals and overturning conventional story-lines.

Catholic and American? Part one in a series

If you asked Catholics in the United States in the 1950s if it was possible to be fully Catholic and fully American, most would have answered with an enthusiastic YES! Today, many Catholics have at best ambivalent feelings about the relationship.

Media ignores grisly murder trial, but pictures don’t lie

Not the blood-spattered walls, not the unsterilized surgical instruments, not the corpses of tiny babies kept in cat food containers are of interest to reporters and their editors these days, unless of course they belong to the Catholic or pro-life press.

The Catholic cure for fear of the mentally challenged

For all the thousands of people I have interviewed, from the famous to the felonious, an encounter with those suffering mental challenges was and still is a challenge for me.

The Bishop of Rome as Christian radical

It was a brief greeting to former colleagues. But if you read Pope Francis’s April 18 letter to the Argentine bishops’ conference closely, you get a glimpse of the man, his convictions and his vision.

Is Dr. Gosnell an aberration?

People look at Dr. Kermit Gosnell and wonder, how could he kill aborted babies born alive? Don’t wonder. He could well be just like a lot of doctors you know.

A reformed (and re-formed) College of Cardinals

The recent papal interregnum and conclave underscored the importance of re-forming, and reforming, the College of Cardinals.

Catholic media needed now more than ever

While many turn to mainstream media for information that affects their lives, finding reputable information about the Catholic faith in secular media can be frustrating.

Impoverished spirits

Certain ritual encounters have now become standard operating procedure for a new pope. In each of these meetings, Pope Francis has done something surprising, in his low-key, gentle way.