There are two reasons there is no obligation to attend Mass on the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary this year. First, when the feast falls on a Saturday or Monday (as it does this year), the obligation to attend Mass is lifted in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Second, Archbishop William E. Lori has issued a general dispensation from attending Mass during the coronavirus pandemic.

While the Catholic colleges of Baltimore are keeping their campuses largely closed for the fall semester, Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg will remain open and has already begun welcoming its largest and most diverse class of freshman students ever.

The Archdiocese of Washington’s Catholic Schools Office hailed an Aug. 7 announcement by a Montgomery County health officer that he has rescinded his previous directives forbidding private and religious schools from opening to in-person instruction at the start of the school year.

“The Mission to Move” is a five-day virtual walk/run that invites participants to set step count goals and track them through a smartphone app called GivHero synced to a fitness tracker. Every time participants reach their goals, their sponsors make contributions to support the outreach of Catholic Charities.

After his engagement was broken off, Deacon Jeremy Smith had a life-changing conversation with Father Charles Canterna that put him on the path to the priesthood.

How does the Catholic Church evangelize at at time when so many people reject organized religion? What impact does secularization have on evangelization? What do recent popes mean when they talk about the “New Evangelization and how are seminarians prepared to evangelize in a secular culture?

Deacon Scott Kady was the only man ordained to the transitional diaconate for the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Instead of being downtown at the Baltimore Basilica, the usual location for the rite, it was held at St. Ignatius, Hickory.

“People say, ‘Well, you know, all lives matter.’ All lives do matter, but all lives will really matter when Black lives matter,” Father Muth said. “We need to be able to keep this up because it’s been such a long time of Black lives not mattering in a lot of different ways.”

One day after Loyola University Maryland announced that its undergraduate classes and most graduate classes would be online-only in the fall, neighboring Notre Dame of Maryland University is also transitioning to almost exclusive remote learning for the coming semester.

Kady, a native of Piedmont, W.Va., will be ordained to the transitional diaconate by Archbishop William E. Lori Aug. 8 at 10 a.m. at St. Ignatius, Hickory, in Forest Hill. It is the penultimate step on his journey to becoming a priest. A livestream of the ordination will be shared on the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s Facebook page.