Jeanie Hannaman

By Sean Fitzpatrick, Crisis Magazine - There is a house down the street from us that becomes an object of annual interest to my children as the days grow short and the nights cold. When we go for evening walks, they pause before it with wide eyes. Skeletons carrying coffins march across the lawn. A spectral bride’s veil stirs in the breeze... As we took it in this year, remarking on a couple of new cadaverous additions, my son scratched his scruffy 10-year-old head and said, “Dad, what does Halloween celebrate?”

By Kristine Christlieb, Church Militant - Dioceses across North America are facing radical changes. Not only are hundreds of parishes merging or closing, how parishes are administered is shifting as well... Bishops point to declining numbers, declining dollars and declining priests as the factors forcing the changes and stressing the relationship between them and parishioners.