Three years ago, I entered my freshman year at Hillsdale College. Although Hillsdale is nestled in Midwestern cornfields 700 miles from my Connecticut home, I was content with my school of choice. With excessive paper writing and a tendency to recite whole chapters of Strunk & White’s Elements of Style at unsuspecting passersby, I was shaping up to be quite the Hillsdale English major.

But something was missing.

The Harry Potter series, the complete works of Jane Austen and British television had made me weak. I was a closet Anglophile, and I secretly longed for the kind of collegiate experience that would turn Sebastian Flyte green with envy. Yes, my first two years at Hillsdale were full...READ MORE

Gian Lorenzo Bernini - Fr. Michael Keating, Crisis Magazine

The Art of Giving - Omar F. A. Gutierrez, Regnum Novum

Why Having A Large Catholic Family Is Fun - Patti Maguire Armstrong

Introducing Chant into the Domestic Church - J. Jacob Tawney, New Liturgical Movement

5 Simple Ways to Share Your Faith On Ash Wednesday - Marcel LeJeune, Aggie Catholics

Could Watching Certain TV Shows Be Against Our Faith? - Fr. John Bartunek, Catholic Spiritual Direction

Make This Your Best Lent Ever, With St. Louis de Montfort - Fr. Ryan Erlenbush, New Theological Movement

Interview with Kevin Lowry, Author of “Faith at Work: Finding Purpose Beyond the Paycheck” - Randy Hain, Integrated Catholic...READ MORE

VATICAN CITY (EWTN NEWS/CNA)—Pope Benedict XVI, at age 84, never goes to sleep before 11pm, prays the Rosary every day, gets up at 5am and uses a cell phone only accessible by his closest advisers.

In an article published online at Europaquotidiano.it on Feb. 17, Italian journalist Aldo Maria Valli documents a day in life of the Pope, who wakes up when Vatican City “is still immersed in silence.”

Valli says the Bavarian Pope is a “typical German, a methodic man,” who “likes to organize his day down to the last detail, according to a very precise schedule.”

Benedict XVI begins his day by celebrating Mass in the papal chapel at 7am, together with his two personal secretaries, Father Georg...READ MORE

VATICAN CITY (EWTN NEWS/CNA)—Cardinal Edwin O’Brien says he will faithfully serve Pope Benedict XVI with his “whole heart.” The emeritus archbishop of Baltimore made his promise as he knelt to receive his red biretta and cardinal’s ring from the Pope in St. Peter’s Basilica on Feb. 18.

“I said to the Pope, ‘I want to serve you as best I can, with my whole heart, and that with the grace that God gives me I will seek to serve you with my whole heart,’” he told journalists at a press conference moments after the consistory.

“So I want the grace and I want those prayers that will prompt that grace from the good Lord, I hope.”

Cardinal O’Brien said he was “humbled and overwhelmed” by the...READ MORE

Author and philosopher Jesuit Father Robert Spitzer defends the pro-life stance with secular principles and argues for a fresh approach to the abortion debate.

“The pro-life movement needs a comprehensive philosophy that makes a case, a very logical case, based on principles which are completely accepted by a secular society that shows that the pro-life position is correct and ethical and objectively true,” Father Spitzer told CNA.

His book, Ten Universal Principles: A Brief Philosophy of the Life Issues was released in 2011.

Father Spitzer, former president of Washington’s Gonzaga University and founder of the California-based Magis Institute, said that he wanted the work to be “very...READ MORE

VATICAN CITY — “There is much talk about the Church of Rome; many things are said,” Pope Benedict XVI told a large gathering of seminarians in a spacious and brightly lit chapel at Rome’s largest seminary the evening of Feb. 15. “Let us hope that people also talk about our faith.”

At a time when much of the world’s media coverage of the Catholic Church has been focused on leaked documents coming from the Holy See (what has been labeled as the Vatican’s own “Wikileaks” crisis), the Pope himself has been following his own advice and focusing on delivering a series of poignant addresses on the faith.

He began the week by reassuring the faithful during his Feb. 12 Angelus address that the...READ MORE

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York says he is happy to be a cardinal but that he is aiming for a higher calling.

“As grateful as I am for being a cardinal, I really want to be a saint,” Cardinal Dolan said to the media after the Feb. 18 ceremony. “I mean that, and I’ve got a long way to go, but it is all about holiness; it is all about friendship with Jesus, and it is all about being a saint. And that’s what I want to be.”

Cardinal Dolan said he was particularly moved by the announcement of two new American saints at the conclusion of the consistory.

In total, Pope Benedict announced seven new saints who will be canonized on Oct. 21. The group includes Blesseds Marianne Cope and Kateri...READ MORE

WASHINGTON (EWTN NEWS/CNA)—About 50 members of Congress convened to oppose the Obama administration’s contraception mandate and to voice support for legislation that would overturn it.

“We have come together to say it’s time to act to protect Americans’ most basic rights: our religious freedom and rights of conscience,” said Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., at a Feb. 15 press conference.

Fortenberry called for “swift action” on the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, which he introduced in the U.S. House last March to repeal the mandate and amend the 2010 health-care overhaul to preserve conscience rights for employers and health-care providers.

The bill, which currently has 190...READ MORE