And then there were none — or maybe one

When Rudy Giuliani officially announced his withdrawal from the race for the Republican presidential nomination yesterday, a field once crowded with Catholic candidates became nearly bereft of them. Only Republican candidate Alan Keyes remains, but he has not gained enough support — financial or otherwise — to be included in candidate debates or to receive [...]

Keeping the faith in Catholic charity

Faced with growing pressure to dilute their Christian message, some leaders of Catholic aid agencies that operate under the Caritas umbrella have been invited to attend a spiritual retreat in order to reaffirm the link between Christian faith and charitable activity.
Top officials for Caritas-affiliated agencies in North and South America have been invited to a retreat in Guadalajara, Mexico [...]

‘We need real journalism in the church’

That’s the headline on a column this week in UCA News, the Asian church news service which has been our longtime partner and friend. And while some may assume the column is for Catholic Press Month (which we celebrate in February here in the States), it’s actually an insightful, albeit coincidental, look at how contrasting styles [...]

Martyrs hanging in there, silently

With a ban on fans’ decibel levels now in place, the North American College has slipped to a third-place tie in the rankings in Rome’s Clericus Cup soccer tournament.
Their 1-0 loss on Saturday to last year’s champs and soccer powerhouse, Redemptoris Mater, gives the NAC Martyrs six points in their division standings, tied with the Benedictine players of Rome’s St. Anselmo College.  
“We had [...]

Arkansas program lets taxpayers donate to families in crisis

With tax season just around the corner for most Americans, here’s an example, courtesy of the Arkansas Catholic in Little Rock, of a partnership between a state taxing agency and a volunteer organization to funnel donations to families facing a child’s catastrophic illness. Called the Baby Sharon Fund, the program was conceived by an Arkansas teacher [...]

‘What non-Catholics like about Catholic schools’

That’s the intriguing headline over an equally intriguing story for this week’s Catholic Schools Week observance in the current edition of The Georgia Bulletin in Atlanta.

Baseball, life — and Lent

As a baseball fan, I know of no better way to warm up on a cold winter’s day than to use a baseball story to talk about life — or Lent, as Joe Towalski does in this column about how a baseball clinic he attended recently with the Minnesota Twins’ Joe Mauer got him thinking about [...]

And you think YOUR neighborhood is noisy!

We’ve been devotedly following the Clericus Cup soccer tournament, which features teams from Rome’s major seminaries in friendly matches with an international flavor. So we wanted to make sure you didn’t miss yesterday’s story about how Clericus Cup fans are being asked to hold down the noise because of complaints from the neighbors. It seems [...]

Easter’s coming early this year

At the Vatican Press Office today, Archbishop Claudio Celli’s inaugural press conference was followed by an informal rinfresco — pizza and spumante. The archbishop had one slice, but some of the journalists made lunch of it.
The dessert tray held those pre-Lenten Italian favorites: frappe, a sweet fried flat pastry, and castagnole, fried and sugared dough [...]

Catching up …

Stories worth noting before they get too old:
 – At least three of our papers had stories this month remembering the work of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Check out these stories in The Rhode Island Catholic in Providence, the Intermountain Catholic in Salt Lake City, and the Arkansas Catholic in Little Rock.
– Two interesting [...]