Dear Brothers and Sisters,This year, as we celebrate World Mission Day, the Year of Faith, which is an important opportunity to strengthen our friendship with the Lord and our journey as a Church that preaches the Gospel with courage, comes to an end. From this perspective, I would like to propose some reflections.1. Faith is God’s precious gift, which opens our mind to know and love him. He wants to enter into relationship with us and allow us to participate in his own life in o...

“Publishers Notes” by Sr. Mary Mark Wickenheiser, Publisher of Pauline Books and MediaWelcome and thank you for joining us!Let me introduce you to a very exciting aspect of Pauline Books and Media—our Pauline Center for Media Studies. Media literacy—or media mindfulness as the faith community often calls it—is an educational imperative for people of the 21st century. The director of our Pauline Center, Sr. Rose Pacatte, offers classes on the theory and practice of m...

Welcome to our Pauline Center for Media Studies. This is a ministry that focuses on the development and encouragement of media literacy/media mindfulness for parents, teachers, and others who are actively involved in faith formation. Sr. Rose, the director, will offer you a quick tour of the Center’s work. In-depth study of the media as related to faith helps many to discover and deepen their love for God and all people. Like all of our other apostolic initiatives, our Pauline Media C...

Thank you for joining us on this seventh day of our webathon, Journey of Discovery.Our particular focus this day has been the discovery of faith through media mindfulness. Our novena webathon has been very fruitful in prayer and financial support. Our needs are as great as our mission and your support enables us to keep providing the documents of the Church, kids books and family catechesis, marriage preparation programs that are faithful to the teaching of the Church, and more to today's U...

We have reached the final moment of today’s webathon and we have just two days left. Now is a critical time for the webathon. We have met many people who have told us how the sisters have impacted them and their family through the years. In order to continue to be there for you, we rely on your assistance to make that possible. Please consider a donation if you haven't already given. When Jesus spoke to our Founder when he was but a teenager, he said the words we are all familiar with: "Co...

It's all still so new: a Pope who calls people from his own cell phone; off-the-cuff interviews (during which he makes sure his guest has coffee--or water, as the case may be); the mad scramble afterwards to get to the heart of the message. After yesterday's marathon, I think we need to establish some ground rules.Here's Rule #1: Get used to it.Right now things feel a bit like that little pirogue I paddled off in one fine summer morning when I was a postulant home for a family visit. I pull...

Two interviews in barely two weeks! Francis is taking every opportunity to engage in conversation. The second is an interview he granted Eugenio Scalfari, an Italian journalist, in the same setting as the three day interview with his fellow Jesuit, Antonio Spadaro. I find it amusing that the Pope, who makes good use of his own cell phone, called to offer Scalfari an appointment, but had to wait to be "put through" to the journalist by the newspaper man's nervous secretary.There are things in tha...

"But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, 'Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.' "Martha is really saying, “Why doesn’t Mary mirror me?” She is saying, “Don’t you care that my sister is not like me?” Further, she is saying, “Why aren’t you, God, like me?” “Make your plan fit into my mirror, or else you don’t care like I do.”...

These days are certainly very different from those in which I grew up. Perhaps you have a similar feeling? The assumption of Christian values and a Christian cultural environment just aren't there today as they were forty years ago. There is a very definite move toward atheism being more public and society being shaped by values which are far from those proclaimed by Jesus in the Gospel. I read last week how an import from Britain called the Sunday Assembly—a church that doesn’t believe in God...

One of our sisters shared this story with me:My mother, Catherine, had a great devotion to Saint Michael the Archangel. This led her to beg his intercession so that her two daughters could attend the Catholic school in a nearby parish, since our own parish did not have one. One day at Mass a request was made for volunteers to help care for the altar linens. My mother thought, “I know how to do that,” but promptly dismissed the thought from her mind. After Mass, on the way to the car, she heard...