All eyes on Rome
On the eve of the conclave, I find myself a bit struck by the amount of attention it seems like the whole world is giving to it all. Sure, the conclave is the oldest election process still in use. And ...
7 reasons to pray for the cardinals in conclave
As the College of Cardinals gathers in Rome for the conclave that will elect our next pope, the rest of us may feel like we have no real role to play in the process. And yet, that is absolutely not the ...
The next pope
There are numerous contenders, of course, and they come from all around the globe. Over the next few weeks, we'll be hearing Vaticanistas on every side handicap the odds. But when the last note of ...
JP2, I still miss you
Twenty years is a long time. But somehow, the death of Pope John Paul II isn't easy for me to place on a timeline. History is elastic when we don't read it in books. The events we remember can ...
Pilgrim roads
It may be disappointing, but contrary to the lyrics of the well-loved John Denver song, "Country Roads" won't ultimately take us home. It's not just because relatively few of us hail from the ...
The end of marriage
When I was a kid, there was a little rhyme everybody chanted to tease whoever they thought was experiencing a childhood crush. It went like this: (Boy's Name) and (Girl's Name), sitting in a ...
A winter wonderland
We missed the Blizzard of '78 by a year. But when people here in Louisiana ask us if we miss the snow, we don't hesitate to tell them that we've had our fill and hope we never see the white ...
