Read & Reflect

Cardinal Ouellet wins defamation lawsuit

A judge has ruled in favor of Cardinal Marc Ouellet in a civil defamation lawsuit against a woman who accused him of sexual assault as part of a class-action suit.Cardinal Marc Ouellet, pictured in Poznań, Poland, on Jan. 1, 2012. © Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk.In a 52-page judgment issued Aug. 31, Que...

Bishop reiterates threat to resign in dispute over Spanish shrine

A six-year dispute between the Spanish Diocese of Barbastro-Monzón and Opus Dei over a Marian image at the shrine of Torreciudad has escalated after almost a year of relative silence, with the local bishop again threatening to resign if the dispute is not resolved in his favor.An aerial view showing...

The Challenges of Love in the Modern and Postmodern World

When Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, he knew that the world he was asked to engage with was one of doubt, atheism, material acquisition, hate, violence, and war. Thus, he began his encyclical Deus Caritas Est with these words: In a world where the name of God is sometimes associat...

Encouragement to Read the Bible

There are times when people say, with varying degrees of facetiousness, that the difference between Catholics and Christian denominations is that Catholics don’t read the Bible. All too often, there is at least a grain of truth in that. I personally did not grow up reading the Bible. Indeed, it was...

The Cross and the Cup of Cold Water

The Gospel frequently places realities beside one another that seem, at first, entirely disproportionate. In the preceding reflection, we considered Christ’s startling declaration that He had come to bring not peace but the sword. That sword is not opposed to the peace of Christ. It is the truth tha...

Intercessory Prayer—Powerful and Challenging

“I will pray for you.” We say this often when we intend to intercede for others in their needs. But we hardly reflect on the grave obligation and power in those words. We fail to realize what bringing others’ needs before God and bringing God’s blessings to them really entails. The Canaanite woman i...

A Saint Film to Inspire Others: Young Carlo

Why is it so hard to make a genuinely well-crafted saint film? This is a question that has baffled my mind for as long as I could remember. I grew up during the great digital transition of cinema where access to filming equipment suddenly became massively cheaper and more available to the consumer m...

Learning to Become: Fulton Sheen and the Beatitudes

Over the years, I have had the joy of republishing many of Fulton J. Sheen’s books. One day, while working on his 1937 classic, The Cross and the Beatitudes, I was asked by the editorial staff to come up with a creative subtitle for the book.  After reading through Fulton Sheen’s analysis of how the...

[Daily Rosary Meditations] Martyrdom Of John The Baptist

[Daily Rosary Meditations] The Bad Habit of Worry

[Daily Rosary Meditations] The Plank in Your Own Eye