Jeanie Hannaman

By Shaun McAfee, Catholic Exchange - For some Catholics, Mardi Gras is an embarrassment. The beads, the excess, the headlines, and the image of immorality have convinced some that the entire celebration is little more than a secular bacchanal—at best a distraction from Lent, at worst an outright contradiction of it. “How,” the objection goes, “can a Catholic possibly defend a festival that appears to glorify indulgence immediately before a season of penance?”... The question is understandable. But it is also historically thin and theologically incomplete.

By Suellen Brewster, Catholic Exchange - In colonial days before the diocese was founded, the Faith was kept alive by the laity itself. Before there was even a regular traveling priest assigned to the region, Catholics held the torch by teaching, praying, and keeping the liturgical calendar in their homes and communities... Frontier days aren’t usually described by words like crisis, but practicing the Catholic Faith was banned from the then-British province of New York, and with no priest nor church building, a crisis it was. As time went on, Catholicism was no longer outlawed, but practicing it required long waits between priestly visits. ...

By Tessa Gervasini for EWTN News, (Catholic World Report) - Finally, some good news. We can only hope that the final step to sainthood moves more smoothly than all the preceding ones once he is beatified and the requisite miracle is documented... The Holy See has officially informed Bishop Louis Tylka of the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, that the cause for the Venerable Servant of God Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen can proceed to beatification, according to an announcement from the diocese... “The next step in the process is the celebration of the beatification, in which Fulton Sheen would be declared Blessed,” Tylka said.