There will always be a purpose to monastic life, say the sisters of Mount St. Scholastica, as long as there is a need in the world for silence, prayer, simplicity, and balance.
Catholic
October 30, 2009: The Monastic Life
October 23, 2009: New Vatican Policy on Anglicans
Watch National Catholic Reporter senior correspondent John L. Allen Jr. and Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly managing editor Kim Lawton discuss the Roman Catholic Church's plan to absorb unhappy Anglicans wishing to become Catholics.
October 23, 2009: Mary Setterholm
She started a support group for women with emotional problems and histories of sexual abuse, and she wants to earn degrees in social work and theological studies to help others like them.
October 9, 2009: Father Damien’s Legacy
On October 11, the 19th-century missionary priest Father Damien will be canonized in Rome and remembered for dedicating his life to individuals with leprosy, a disease that still afflicts more than 250,000 people a year.
"That’s federal public lands," says plaintiff Frank Buono. "It belongs to everyone, and so it matters to me that the lands held in common by the United States do not become the venues for sectarian religious expressions, even of my own religious expressions."
September 11, 2009: Laser Monks
A community of entrepreneurial Cistercian monks in rural Wisconsin balance a life of prayer and work, charity and contemplation. They also run a multi-million-dollar ink-and-toner business.
"What binds us together and what binds God to us is food," says Father Leo Patalinghug, a Roman Catholic priest who has his own cooking show.
September 4, 2009: Father Leo Extended Interview
Read more of Kim Lawton's interview with Father Leo and watch him talk about his television cook-off with celebrity chef and restaurateur Bobby Flay.
Shaun Casey: Senator Edward Kennedy and Religion
Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly managing editor Kim Lawton speaks with Shaun Casey, author of "The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy v. Nixon 1960," about the role of religion in the late Senator Edward Kennedy’s political life.
August 21, 2009: U.S. Nuns and the Vatican
"Women religious say this represents an investigation or an attack on the American way of being church, which has stressed more lay involvement, more religious involvement, collegiality, more accountability demanded of the bishops," says National Catholic Reporter editor Tom Fox.


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