Jeanie Hannaman

By Brad Miner, The Catholic Thing - Mr. Dickens was not a Catholic (in fact, he called our faith “a curse upon the world”), and he was not a particularly enthusiastic Anglican either. But he did have a sense of how faith can transform lives, and it’s reasonable to say that, in A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge has a born-again experience (well, better to call it metanoia) thanks to the visits of the three ghosts. It’s also obvious from much of his work that Dickens was a proponent of the Social Gospel; that he saw Christianity as a force for justice, especially justice for the poor.

By Catholic News Agency - Given that the country’s tax-rich dioceses and powerful bishops’ conference are already financing a wide array of media projects and news outlets that provide training, the initiative by the pope emeritus was recognized by both supporters and critics as a strategic move to bolster orthodox Catholic reporting independent of episcopal and other influences.