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Love Your Neighbor
Six Ways to be a Thoughtful Gift-giver
Have you ever had the experience of giving a gift and knowing the recipient hated it? Either by the look on the person’s face when he or she opened it or its disregard later? I have, and it’s not a good feeling. I have also been on the…
What I Learned At the Stoplight
We’ve all seen them: those lone, scruffy figures at intersections and freeway underpasses holding bent cardboard signs asking for a handout. Their faces are as cracked and blistered as the sidewalk. Their meager possessions lie tangled in a…
There’s more than one way to be pro-life
One Sunday after Mass, Lisa Penzkover from Caldwell, Idaho, was discussing the topic of pro-life fairs with some parishioners when she mentioned how she thought it would be important to include a foster care booth. Penzkover says, “They…
Twelve Questions to Ask Before Giving Money to Charity
“Give, save, spend.” That’s the formula we tell our children when we teach them how to handle money—and it’s a formula that translates well into our adult lives. Most of us have spending down pat, and we have at least some idea of how to…
Meet people whose lives Catholic Relief Services transformed
BY JOHN BURGER Celebrity chef Lidia Bastianich grew up in northeastern Italy, in an area that became part of Yugoslavia after World War II. Her family was desperate to escape life under communism. “We had no one. They found a home for us.…
Changing hearts and minds with Catholic theater
BY ELLA HADACEK Catholics are called to reflect the truth and beauty of God in every facet of their lives. St. John Paul II beautifully articulates the role of Catholic artists in his Letter to Artists. With loving regard, the divine Artist…
Memphis’s longest-running soup kitchen feeds souls
by Emily Dagostino Six days a week, Martin Johnson starts his morning at 3 a.m. at St. Mary’s Soup Kitchen in Memphis, Tennessee, with prep work on soup and coffee. By midmorning, the line to the kitchen is snaking out the door of the…
Spirituality on the streets
BY DANIEL P. SMITH Where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more. (Romans 5:20) Just before 8 p.m. on a wintry Wednesday in Chicago, three words pouring from a police radio seize the attention of Fr. Dan Brandt: infant, unattended,…
Better Way Detroit
by Lori Hadacek Chaplin In May 2018, desiring to help the less fortunate, Fr. Marko Djonovic approached homeless men and women and offered them an hourly wage and lunch to clean up Detroit parks. He felt that exchanging work for pay —…
National Council of Catholic Women – a 100-year anniversary!
by Melanie Rigney They gathered on March 4, 1920, in Washington, D.C., 122 voting delegates who represented all but one diocese in the country along with 57 women’s societies. Together, they formed the National Council of Catholic Women…
