There’s zero obligation for Catholics to go to Marian shrines. The decision to visit them is totally voluntary. Many shrines do attract large numbers of pilgrims; the Marian apparition site at Lourdes, ...

Mary is the English translation of the Hebrew name Miriam. There are different opinions ...

In the last week, two different people have asked me if I have any interest in owning a Kindle. My answer both times was a ...

We don’t know exactly what Jesus called his mother when he was young. The Gospels don’t include any stories where the child Jesus addresses Mary directly, so we can only guess. It seems ...

Many families do wait until Christmas Eve or Christmas Day to put the baby Jesus into the manger scene, for the reason that he has not yet been born, and that an empty manger captures ...

This is a great question, and it touches on so much of what Catholics believe about Mary. I’ll throw out a few different ideas here, and hopefully one or more of them will resonate ...

It comes from the Miraculous Medal, which is a small medal often worn by Catholics. In 1830, a young French nun named Catherine Labouré had several visions of Mary. In one of these ...

There is almost no information in the Gospels about what Mary was doing or where she was during the years of Jesus’ ministry. One story we do have, told by three of the four ...

No, Mary did not write a Gospel, or anything else that we know of. There is a text that is known as the Gospel of Mary, but the Mary in question is Mary Magdalene, ...

Lately, I've been considering teaching my son Matthew about the saints. At the big-boy age of 5, he's surely old enough to become captivated by their ...

The song “Ave Maria” is a popular choice for Catholic weddings, and it is liturgically appropriate to include it, if the couple chooses to do so. (In fact, it was a part of my ...

Although nun’s habits (particularly the veils) may make them look like Mary, the habit actually has a broader symbolic meaning. Traditionally speaking, the habit is an outward sign of the nun’s vocation, a way ...

The patron saint for cancer in general is St. Peregrine. (There are a few others, but Peregrine is the most well-known.) Most specific forms of cancer, female or otherwise, don’t have ...

I consulted the website for the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, and from their list of Catholic schools, I counted 46 whose names are Marian in character. Most of these are schools ...

My knee-jerk response to this was no, because that’s what the good sisters told me in Catholic school thirty years ago. But I did a little research, and found that it’s not quite as ...

Mary never had the stigmata (miraculous wounds or pain that correspond to the physical suffering of Christ) . She certainly suffered great emotional pain; Simeon said as much during the Presentation of the infant ...

The first picture I ever saw of Father Mychal Judge was a photo of his dead body. In the days following 9/11, I was haunted by the image of four men carrying the New York ...

No, the Hail Mary is not a part of the Catholic Mass. That said, I have been to a few Masses where the priest inserts a Hail Mary at the end of his homily (this ...

First of all, congratulations on the new job. Second, it’s a bit hard to answer the question as I’m not entirely sure where your discomfort lies. Does it lie in the fact ...

In the apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus, Pope Piux XII wrote that  Mary, “having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.”  Thus the Assumption, a long-standing tradition of the Church, was ...