I won’t miss those skeletons on the neighborhood lawns. But I treasure remembering how close we are to our beloved, living and dead.

This year, however, the annual November meeting in Baltimore has an opportunity to take a public stand on an issue that is roiling the neighborhoods and parishes of many American communities — the current administration’s aggressive campaign to seize and deport undocumented immigrants.

There is no absolute certainty in discerning a vocational call. If we have certainty, we wouldn’t keep pursuing the mystery of God present in the silence and stillness. That is where the will of God is found.

Antisemitism is a malignancy in society. Throughout modern political history, rising antisemitism has been an unmistakable marker of cultural decay.

Purgatory is indeed a state that exists apart from the linear time we experience in our lives on earth, and therefore we cannot truly speak about how long a soul spends in purgatory according to a literal measure of days, months or years.

All Saints is a churchwide holy day of obligation and normally celebrated on Nov. 1. If the first day of November falls on a Saturday or Monday, at least in the United States, the obligation to attend Mass is abrogated. All Souls’ Day takes place on Nov. 2, unless it falls on a Sunday, then the celebration is held Nov. 3.

Participating in the Jubilee for Synod Teams and Participatory Bodies in Rome was a moving experience of communion, prayer and listening at the heart of the universal Catholic Church. 

Much has been written about keeping Christ in Christmas but Catholic children’s author Anthony DeStefano’s new book is helping to keep the Hallow — or “holy” — in Halloween.

n many cases we seem to be embarrassed by the ideas that spirits are real, that angels and demons exist, and that exorcisms are not an ancient misunderstanding of neurological problems.

Whatever new challenges you undertake during this season, may you find they give you strength, clarity of purpose or whatever you are seeking on your faith journey.