So where were you when the Aug. 23 earthquake hit? I was hearing confessions at Oak Crest in a room off the chapel. The whole room and chapel shook. After that, no one else came to confession! I guess people figured: “Don’t go in there! What kind of penance is Father Joe handing out?”Read More

When Mary Chilton first spotted the New World in November 1620, the 13-year-old had been aboard the Mayflower for 10 weeks, stuck in the same clothes and cramped in dark, damp quarters among seasick passengers and dying goats. Each family was allotted one storage trunk for all their possessions.Read More

The sounds of a choir of Baltimore City Catholic schoolchildren and the Archbishop Curley High School drumline welcomed 1,100 formally dressed celebrants to the Baltimore Convention Center Oct. 22 for a gala dinner feting Catholic schools in the archdiocese.Read More

Monsignor James Hannon was a little intimidated by his assignment to preach the homily for the Archdiocese of Baltimore deacons’ convocation Oct. 1 in Potomac. The priest, who recently left his pastorate of a handful of parishes in Mountain Maryland to become associate director of the division of clergy personnel for the archdiocese, told a...Read More

One of the (many) signs of our cultural decline is that verbal insults, these days, are almost invariably scatological or sexual, provoking a blizzard of asterisks whenever A wants to put the smackdown on B. Once upon a time, it was not so.Read More

The Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher may provide support for the bricks-and-mortar holy places in the Holy Land, but just as important – maybe more so – is its support for the living stones in the region, the living descendants of the original followers of Christ, says the recently retired head of the order.Read More

Implementing a Twitter firewall at home is a bit like asking a roommate to hide your Halloween candy.Read More

Judging by the impassioned commentary from some Catholic quarters during recent confrontations between unionized public-sector workers and state governments, you’d think we were back in 1919, with the church defending the rights of wage slaves laboring in sweat shops under draconian working conditions. That would hardly seem to be the circumstances of, say, unionized American...Read More