I wouldn’t want to hold our children back. Or maybe I would, just a little bit, to keep them close a little longer.

The short answer is that while the Latin (a.k.a. “Roman”) Catholic Church normally envisions a bishop as being the minister of confirmation, there are some scenarios where a simple priest is able to celebrate this sacrament.

In a long, fruitful career as leader of the American hierarchy, Cardinal Gibbons combined diplomacy, patriotism and a canny understanding of human nature in a manner that made him the most effective advocate before or since of the Americanization of American Catholicism. To him more than anyone, the Catholic Church owes both the advantages and the unintended consequences of assimilation into American secular culture.

Forever ago—or maybe it was just the other day—I packed a lunchbox for my 4-year-old to take to school.

“I love thinking of how God was watching, guiding us toward one another, always knowing how it would come together. He must have enjoyed seeing how we connected over a much-loved painting of a little girl and a dog.”

Jess Echeverry knows how it feels to face pregnancy and motherhood alone. She experienced trauma, homelessness and three unexpected pregnancies before age 22.

Dorothy Day was co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement and longtime editor of the penny-a-copy newspaper of the same name. From the mid-1930s to the early 1980s, she preached radical Christianity and no less radical social activism to a sometimes appreciative, sometimes puzzled, sometimes angry audience of American Catholics.

Before becoming a mother, I had no idea how important my relationships with other mothers would be.

Among the many beautiful feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary is the Visitation. This year it falls on a Sunday and so won’t be celebrated in the liturgy. Nevertheless, it should not be passed over in silence. Among its important lessons is the beauty of interior freedom – Mary’s interior freedom.

When Mark Scallion arrived at Mount St. Mary’s, the former high school star found himself sitting on the bench. Instead of giving up, he embraced a new role — and made college basketball history in the process.