I wonder if this would work for homiletics…? From The New York Times: The two undergraduates were acing their presentation. Good cadence. Sharp slides. Sunny dispositions. But it was a tough crowd. As the first slides flashed by, one audience member got up and paced the room. The other, breathing with conspicuous heaviness, rested her head sleepily on the ground. The students inflected their voices and gestured with gusto to regain their attention. So it goes when your audience is... Read more

Many of you will remember Father Greg Ketcham, from the Diocese of Peoria, whose story I posted a couple weeks back. Yesterday, he published on his parish website this update:  Hello Parishioners and Friends! Late yesterday afternoon, after 10 working days of waiting, I received my pathology report from MD Anderson in Houston, Texas. I have a brain tumor on the left part of my head close to my speech center and there is a “cloud of tumors” rising from the main tumor. This... Read more

Incredible:  A Pennsylvania bride who lost her father to tragedy 10 years ago found herself walking down the aisle with the man who received his heart. Jeni Stepien was unable to hold back tears when she embraced Arthur Thomas for the first time Friday and felt her father’s heart beating inside him. “Can you feel it?” Thomas asked her in a video taken by Pittsburgh TV station KDKA. She tearfully held his wrist and chest and quietly nodded. Stepien’s father, Michael Stepien,... Read more

J.D. Flynn explains in First Things: Catholicism is not a congregationalist religion. Membership is not a self-defining proposition. Grace—the grace of baptism—makes one a Catholic. The Church teaches that “by baptism, one is incorporated into the Church of Christ and is constituted a person in it.” Catholics believe that baptism has certain objective and unalterable consequences. That Catholic identity is not the subject of self-definition. Nor is it the consequence of proper Catholic behavior, or assent to the Church’s teachings,... Read more

Like a lot of people I stayed up far too late Friday night, watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Rio. It was spectacular, as all these things usually are—rich with pageantry and music and ceremony. There’s something thrilling in seeing thousands of athletes parade into a vast arena—and it gained an added emotional punch this year, when for the first time, a special team made up of refugees marched in under the Olympic flag. Over the next two... Read more

Here’s something pretty cool:  When 10 men professed their first vows as Augustinian friars at St. Rita High School on July 31, two of them had unusual examples to follow. Friar Joseph Roccasalva and Friar Robert Carroll are both the sons of permanent deacons in the Archdiocese of Chicago. They grew up in neighboring parishes on the South Side and both attended Catholic high schools. They now are part of the largest group of new friars the community has had... Read more

The long-anticipated film (produced by Mark Burnett and Roma Downey) opens on August 19, following in the chariot tracks of a legend: the classic, Oscar-winning 1959 movie starring Charlton Heston, directed by the great William Wyler. Will this new version be any match for the original? We’ll find out soon enough. One sign of promise: the screenplay is credited to John Ridley, who wrote the acclaimed film “12 Years a Slave” (and won an Oscar for his efforts). Meantime, it’s wort noting... Read more

From Christian Today:  A major evangelical free church in Sweden is preparing to use drones to drop thousands of Bibles into areas of Iraq controlled by Islamic State. The Livets Ord (Word of Life) church in Uppsala in the north of Sweden has said it will use drones flying at high altitude to release thousands of small, electronic Bibles into Iraq. “The Bibles are the size of pill boxes and have a display. They require no electricity, but work on their own,”... Read more

From the USCCB website, a blog post written by Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz, Bishop Richard J. Malone and Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski: When a prominent Catholic politician publicly and voluntarily officiates at a ceremony to solemnize the relationship of two people of the same-sex, confusion arises regarding Catholic teaching on marriage and the corresponding moral obligations of Catholics. What we see is a counter witness, instead of a faithful one founded in the truth. Pope Francis has been very clear in... Read more

Commonweal has a few answers. The most familiar name, of course, is Phyllis Zagano, who has written and commented extensively on the subject since her landmark book “Holy Saturday” in 2002. But who are the others? Rita Ferrone offers an overview, giving a little more ink to the female members and noting “the fact that half of the commission is female makes this effort an outstanding exercise for the Vatican”: Sister Núria Calduch-Benages teaches at the Gregorian University in Rome and is a... Read more