Browsing News Entries

Anything But Ordinary: The Surprise of Lou Holtz

Dr. Tod Worner

Lou Holtz smiling

Lou Holtz, coach and devout Catholic, didn’t create the culture at Notre Dame, but he breathed new life into it.

‘Deliver Me From Nowhere’: Another Side of The Boss

Henry T. Edmondson III

The film offers the opportunity to look more closely at the "Nebraska" album, especially its association with Southern writer Flannery O’Connor.

Friday, March 6, 2026

Bishop Robert Barron

DGR Eng

Friends, just before his passion and death, Jesus tells this striking story of the landowner who planted a vineyard.

The Catholic Kerouac

Matthew Malone

Jack Kerouac

Revered as a major figure in 1960s counterculture, he always identified as a social and political conservative informed by his lifelong love for Catholicism.

Thursday, March 5, 2026

Bishop Robert Barron

DGR Eng

Friends, today’s Gospel reading is the story of the poor man Lazarus, who sat outside the door of a rich man and “would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table.”

A Confession of the Legendary Lou Holtz

Dr. Christopher Kaczor

Coach Lou Holtz

I pray he has received an extraordinary reward and the ultimate championship victory. 

A Sense of Home: Chesterton, Berry, and a Thoughtful Environmentalism

William Saylor

land from above

Catholics today, especially the young, are realizing that only in the Chestertonian tradition of home can the fullness of Catholic social teaching be realized.

Church is holy by Christ's presence, not human perfection, pope says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) --The Catholic Church is both a community made up of fragile and limited human beings and a divine reality, Pope Leo XIV said at his weekly general audience.

The pope continued his series on the Second Vatican Council March 4 in St. Peter's Square, emphasizing one of its principal documents, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, "Lumen Gentium," which examines the nature and identity of the Church. 

He said the Church is "a community of men and women who share the joy and struggle of being Christians, with their strengths and weaknesses, proclaiming the Gospel and becoming a sign of the presence of Christ who accompanies us on our journey through life."

However, he added, it also has a "divine dimension." Its divine nature "does not consist in an ideal perfection or spiritual superiority of its members, but in the fact that the Church is generated by God’s plan for humanity, realized in Christ," he said. 

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As proof of this coexistence, Pope Leo pointed to the life of Jesus Christ to illustrate the two dimensions of the Church. People were moved by his humanity, the sounds of his voice, as well as his message.

"Those who decided to follow him were moved precisely by the experience of his welcoming gaze, the touch of his blessing hands, his words of liberation and healing," the pope said. "At the same time, however, by following that man, the disciples opened themselves to an encounter with God. Indeed, Christ’s flesh, his face, his gestures and his words visibly manifest the invisible God."

It is through this humanity, through the struggles and fragility of the faithful that Christ's presence is manifested, the pope said.

"This is what constitutes the holiness of the Church: the fact that Christ dwells in her and continues to give himself through the smallness and fragility of her members," he said.

Pope Leo said this dichotomy is quintessential of God's love, making himself visible through the weakness of his creation and "continuing to manifest himself and to act." The faithful are called to act through communion and charity among all.

"Let us strive to be authentic witnesses of the love of Christ so that all can recognize in us and among us the charity that characterizes true Christians and builds up the Church," the pope said in his greetings to English-speakers.

Memories of an Inevitable Occurrence: George Saunders’s ‘Vigil’

Andrew Tolkmith

ominous cloudy sky

What are we really after? Can we relate meaningfully with the afterlife while we still live?

Thirsting for God

Bishop Robert Barron

Friends, on this Third Sunday of Lent, we hear the story from John’s Gospel of the woman at the well—a kind of master class in evangelization.