Essays

With the announcement of Pope Benedict XVI’s plan to resign, the Roman Catholic Church stands at an important crossroad. There are many Catholics and non-Catholics alike who have bristled at [...]

Free at last! You’ve moved beyond childhood, beyond adolescence. And now you’re an adult. It may not feel that way. After all, you’ve spent your life viewing adults as other [...]

I don’t have any grandchildren yet, so I enjoy seeing little kids with their families in fast food restaurants. The babies, of course, and the toddlers, and the two-year-olds, and [...]

There is a great deal of yearning in the newly published “An Irrepressible Hope: Notes from Chicago Catholics.” And some bitterness, too. But that is to be expected. Edited by [...]

In 2010, Janine Denomme died of cancer. We were members of the St. Gertrude parish in Edgewater. We served on the parish council together. Janine was one of the pillars [...]

I’m Catholic, and I vote. But I don’t get my sample ballot from the Vatican. Don’t get me wrong. I listen to what official church leaders have to say about [...]

I walk out the door of my suburban newspaper office, out to the parking lot, in the harsh sunlight of dusk on an early Friday evening. It’s been a long [...]

In May, 1912, the St. Gertrude parish, where I am now a member, was just five months old, and Sunday mass was being celebrated in a temporary wood-and-steel structure [...]

Let me say first off that there are many times when I find Mass routine and less than exciting. It’s not like going to a movie or reading a book. [...]

Yes, yes, it may be a hoax of some sort. But I’m excited by the news that a small rectangular piece of papyrus, seemingly from the writings of early Christians, [...]