Light One Candle

By: Jerry Costello for The Christophers.
Are you having a parade in your town this Memorial Day? If the answer is yes, you’re not alone. Most towns do. Memorial Day is a grand occasion for some old-fashioned patriotism, and whether it happens once a year or every day, there’s nothing wrong with that.

By: Tony Rossi, Director of Communications, The Christophers
"You don’t have to solve all the world’s problems," the priest told his parishioners. "But don’t ignore them, either. Do what you can to improve things, even a little bit. That’s what Jesus wants us to do."

By: Tony Rossi, Director of Communications, The Christophers

Raised by devoutly Catholic parents, Colleen Carroll Campbell was a junior at Marquette University who found herself legalistically following the Church’s big rules—going to Mass on Sundays, not having sex before marriage—while keeping her faith separate from her daily life and frequent partying.

Often when a Catholic parish or a school is in the news these days, it’s either closing or on the verge of it. Pastors frequently have no choice. It all comes down to numbers: to enrollment or attendance, to profit and loss, to dollars and cents. When a closing is the only alternative, aggrieved people are likely to be left in its wake, but it’s just as likely that the priest—or an administrator, or the diocese itself—can’t do anything else. The money is simply not there.
And then there’s St. Brigid’s.

By: Tony Rossi, Director of Communications, The Christophers

Like a lot of people, Mary DeTurris Poust was a multitasker, used to mindlessly eating breakfast while reading e-mails on her laptop. Then, while on a retreat that didn’t allow reading, writing, or talking, she was confronted by the mealtime dilemma, "It’s just me and my corn chowder. I’ve got to figure out what to do here."

By: Tony Rossi, Director of Communications, The Christophers

When he was a fourth-grader at Holy Cross Grammar School in Springfield, Massachusetts, Matt Weber noticed that a picture of Francis of Assisi depicted the revered saint with holes in his hands, feet and side. His religion teacher explained that St. Francis bore the stigmata, the wounds of Christ. "How do you get the stigmata?" Weber asked.
"You have to be a good Catholic," the teacher responded.

By: Tony Rossi, Director of communications, The Christophers

By: Tony Rossi, Director of Communications, The Christophers

"This world is as broken as it is beautiful."

By: Jerry Costello, The Christophers
The regular column by Father Joseph Breighner in The Catholic Review, the newspaper of the Baltimore Archdiocese, always has a nice twist, and the one I squirreled away a while ago is no exception. He used to answer questions from listeners in his "Ask Father Joe" radio program so he keeps a handful of stories at the ready. This one, though, beats them all.