Faith and Culture

Franciscan Friars of the Renewal don’t flinch in the face of the destitute. Daily, the friars serve the ill, homeless, prisoners and prostitutes in poor and dangerous areas.

The Jesuits are returning more than 500 acres in South Dakota to the Rosebud Sioux. The formal return of the property is expected to be complete sometime in May.

Catholic and Protestant disagreement over women’s ordination has less to do with the churches’ views of women’s status than their differences dating back to the Reformation. The sticking point: whether ordained ministry is a sacrament instituted by Christ, as the Catholic Church teaches, or a church-developed ecclesiastical rite, as many Protestants maintain, Sister Sara Butler said at her April 26 lecture, “The Catholic Priesthood as Sacramental Reality: Women’s Ordination in Ecumenical Perspective.” The Siena Symposium at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul sponsored the talk.

During the first day of production on his most recent film, Preston Yarger was concerned for the well-being of his cast and crew. "It was 40 degrees and raining all day long, and everyone was soaked to the bone and just completely shivering," the 21-year-old recalled. But as it turned out, he needn't have worried.

"The Promise," a film dramatizing the genocide of Armenians in the Turkish-ruled Ottoman Empire at the outset of World War I, was two years in the making, but probably a half-century in the idea stage, according to George Winter, one of the movie's producers.

The rehearsal hall in the basement of the music building at St. Catherine University in St. Paul isn’t a mid-18th century cathedral in Leipzig, Germany. But it is where “St. John Passion,” a jewel in Johann Sebastian Bach’s baroque musical crown, is coming to life.

Author Rod Dreher's critics call him an "alarmist" for proposing that Christians today "put some distance" between themselves and "the chaotic mainstream," or Christianity will not survive.

Steve Houge had a good gig as a twenty-something working in the print shop at St. Thomas College in St. Paul in the early 1970s. Despite having a Catholic employer, he had never heard of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.