One lesson I have yet to be taught is how to take a beating as all Christian men must learn how to do.

A chapter in a remarkable American and Catholic life will close on June 6, when Abbot Thomas Frerking, OSB, concludes more than two decades of service as leader of the monastic community at St. Louis Abbey.

Like his father before him, Eric McLuhan had to deal with the tsunami of "information" generated in what has become a seven-billion-channel media universe.

To most of Britain's Catholic population, Jacob Rees-Mogg is, to say the least, a curious figure.

I think the heroic nineteenth-century archbishop in Cuba, Anthony Mary Claret, was off the mark when he disapproved of laughter because Jesus is not known to have laughed.

Francis Thompson (1859-1907), English author, ascetic, and drug addict, wrote "The Hound of Heaven".

"Ida Elisabeth" is a novel about a self-sacrificing woman whose life of heroic suffering for the sake of her marriage and children exemplifies moral courage.

"Your own countrymen have disowned you, Don Fermão," said the young King Charles of Spain, the most powerful ruler upon earth, soon also to inherit the title of Holy Roman Emperor.  

Seventy-five years ago last February, Sophie and Hans Scholl and their friend Christian Probst were executed by guillotine at Munich's Stadelheim Prison for high treason.

It's very good to be able, finally, to have a film I can recommend wholeheartedly, although it's impossible for me not to be a little querulous.