No matter what your background, evangelizing friends and family is not an easy task. When engaging with loved ones who have fallen away from the Church, it is easy for us to focus on what they’re doing wrong or on what we’re doing wrong when we try to witness to them. But the more important thing is to concentrate on God’s desire for all of us to become saints. When we allow God to purify our inconsistencies that keep us from clearly communicating Jesus to our loved ones, then we will be able...

October is a lovely time in many parts of our country. Last week I had the chance to see fall in South Carolina: a still green landscape. In North Carolina’s mountains, reds, yellows and browns were appearing. In Boston more colors are displayed along our roadsides. A side street was covered with dry oak leaves—a sure sign of change in the air.Recently an on-line reader commented on an article I wrote. He recalled having met me in our Toronto bookstore about five years ago. To help himself thr...

This past month we celebrated a number of the Church’s great people of prayer: Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Therese of Lisieux, and Blessed Timothy Giaccardo. They were all masters not only of liturgical prayer, but of personal prayer. What does that mean? Very simply put, it means they prayed from within their own lives. They prayed who they were, so to speak. Would we put ourselves in that category? Do you and I pray, as St Therese did, “our own little way?”  Let’s...

I, no doubt as many of you, heard about the work of the Synod on the Family through glaring news headlines earlier this week. It was a couple of days before I located the document itself (in its unofficial translation) on the Vatican’s website. By the time I read it I had already been bombarded with bloggers and journalists that had either usurped the Synod document to confirm their agenda or rejected it outright as a sell-out.This morning I found the Message of the Synod Fathers issued at the ...

             We, Synod Fathers, gathered in Rome together with Pope Francis in the Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, greet all families of the different continents and in particular all who follow Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We admire and are grateful for the daily witness which you offer us and the world with your fidelity, faith, hope, and love.Each of us, pastors of the Church, grew up in a family, and we come from a great variety of backgrounds and experie...

November 15, 2013 (Boston) — Pauline Books & Media is proud to announce the release of Contraception and Catholicism: What the Church Teaches and Why, by Angela Franks, PhD.In this new publication, Franks tackles perhaps the most widely misunderstood Catholic Church teaching of all: contraception. Franks knows firsthand the confusions and objections that arise in response to this controversial subject matter, since as a young Catholic she also questioned the Church’s stance on contraceptio...

September 1, 2013 (Boston) — Pauline Books & Media is pleased to announce the release of Meeting Jesus Christ: Meditations on the Word by Reverend Monsignor J. Brian Bransfield, author of the best-selling The Human Person: According to John Paul II (Pauline Books & Media, 2010) and Living the Beatitudes: A Journey to Life in Christ (Pauline Books & Media, 2011).Monsignor J. Brian Bransfield is a priest of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia who serves as the Associate General Secretary ...