U.S. Catholic

In 1970, at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, country artist Johnny Cash recorded his friend Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” a song about a solitary, hard-drinking musician walking through town on Sunday morning and catching glimpses of a communal life from which he’s been sundered. Introducing the song, Cash talked about how everyone has experienced being […]<...

Readings (Year A): Isaiah 56:1, 6–7Psalm 67:2–3, 5, 6, 8Romans 11:13–15, 29–32Matthew 15:21–28 Reflection: What can we learn from Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman? There is a lot about today’s gospel that is discomfiting, not least of which is the apparent disregard Jesus has for a woman in need. To make matters worse, this […]

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Catholic educational institutions have a long tradition of helping students understand and engage a range of social issues—from immigration and the economy to environmental degradation and international conflict. Yet many Catholic schools, especially institutions of higher education, have been unsure how to foster conversation and encourage activism around the crisis in Israe...

This is my feline conversion story. I live in the urban beach peninsula of Rockaway, Queens, a part of New York City which in many ways is far different than the rest of it. It includes seven miles or so of oceanfront, a place where nature and the intrusion of hundreds of thousands of humans […]

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The Things I Didn’t Say Xania Monet (Hallwood Media, 2026) Around a decade ago, much hubbub was being raised about the “fake artists” that were sneaking their way onto unsuspecting Spotify listeners’ algorithmically-generated playlists. Those were simpler times, though, and said “fake artists” were flesh-and-blood humans, just ones that had been paid by Spotify to […]

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