Effie Caldarola, Cathoilc News Service

When I was a little girl, I took swimming lessons at the municipal pool in the town near my farm home. The instructor was...

"I just can't understand ..." How often do we utter those words in consternation, confusion and anger during these troubled times? Often, what we don't...

At a New Year’s Eve party, someone asked everyone about their 2020 resolutions. Talk about deflating a celebration. Some people said they didn’t make...

As we trudge into 2020, a year that promises to be just as rancorous politically as the year we are ending, I find myself...

"Stay awake." With this terse command, the Gospel of Matthew begins our season of Advent on Sunday, Dec. 1. How rich and rewarding will be...

It was a chilly March night in a small Midwestern town. Maybe it was windy, because in my memory the Great Plains are always...

You’re having a dinner party. You’re in the kitchen. The pasta water’s boiling, the salad needs tossing, the table needs setting. The guests have arrived,...

My husband’s father and my mother came from diverse backgrounds. My father-in-law grew up in an East Coast urban tenement with his Italian immigrant parents....

I grew up near a small town that had a big Labor Day weekend celebration. For a farm kid, it rivaled Christmas for excitement....

Pope Francis described the church as a "field hospital," and Father Thomas Hoar, who has worked with individuals with addiction at St. Edmund's Retreat...