[Filed 2 October 2021 from the Madrid-Alicante train!] The traditional goal for the Catholic pilgrim to Santiago de Compostela, particularly in a Holy Year, is to visit the shrine of the apostle Saint James the Great and gain the indulgences...
In our journey back to God, we all start with the things He has revealed to us. We learn about the actions of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in history, scripture, the Church, and the lives of the saints....
I originally set out to continue walking the Camino de Levante because it is the route that starts from my home province in southeast Spain. I wanted to connect home with the shrine of Saint James during this Xacobeo—the Compostela...
[Editor’s note: I was surprised when I awoke this morning with an email from Spain, sent to me by the author from a breakfast bar in El Toboso. So enjoy this bonus letter from the Camino. The next episode will...
This and the next article are coming ‘live’ from the Camino de Santiago during the Compostela Holy Year, as I walk for two weeks across La Mancha to Toledo and possibly as far as Avila. As always on the Camino,...
The Benedictine Monastery and the Franciscan Field Hospital Catholics aren’t Countercultural As Catholics, we’re called to resist the “culture of death” and the “throw-away culture.” Does this mean we are countercultural? Are we being called to oppose a culture, or...
Wilderness is a conflicted, multi-faceted idea. It is a place we escape to for quiet and solace but not somewhere to call home. It can be threatening and dangerous while offering refreshment and recreation. In the Catholic imagination, it is...
Foncebadón is the highest village on the Camino, where pilgrims climb the mountain trail west from León. The area is known as the Maragatería and by the 1990s its ruined villages had become emblematic of the new social problem of...
We have come to know and expect that whenever the pope writes or says anything of significance, he will earn the ire of professional provocateurs. Now, in the eighth year of Francis’s papacy, there’s a certain comforting predictability about the...
In his address to the US Congress in 2015, Pope Francis mentioned the prominent American Trappist monk Thomas Merton, describing him as “a man of prayer, a thinker who challenged the certitudes of his time and opened new horizons for...
For the past couple of weeks I have taken up Pope Francis’s recent encouragement that we read his encyclical Laudato Si. I’m ashamed to say that I’d never read it before, but I decided that now is as good a...
Author’s Note: This article borrows heavily from my 2018 response to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith’s Oeconomicae et Pecnuniariae Quaestiones. This updated and rewritten article incorporates more recent ideas and examples. The conversation on Universal Basic Income...
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