What's New

  • Contemporary Christians and Muslims share family values in Lebanon
    Posted: March 31, 2023 - 12:27pm

    Asked about the ways that Catholicism and contemporary Lebanese culture shape family life in Lebanon today, Catholics in Lebanon generally suggested that norms and ideals for the family are remarkably similar for Muslims and Christians.1

  • Influx of refugees and outward migration continue to shape Lebanese Catholicism
    Posted: March 31, 2023 - 10:57am

    As is true for Christianity in many places in the world, Lebanese Catholicism has been repeatedly shaped and reshaped by migration. Maronites likely emigrated to Mount Lebanon from modern-day Syria at least a millennium ago, as did Melkite Greek in the early 18th century. Armenian Catholics established their headquarters in Beirut because of the catastrophic genocide that displaced them from their homelands a century ago. Chaldean Catholics followed more recently from Iraq. Egyptian Coptic Catholics have migrated for work and have built an attractive church complex in Beirut.

  • Maronite Catholics show devotion to saints for ascetics and miracles, Melkites value protectors
    Posted: March 30, 2023 - 5:08pm

    Images of saints are ubiquitous along streets, in public squares, and in homes in Maronite parts of Lebanon. A visitor who had no knowledge of Catholicism might conclude from the images he sees in public that the Virgin Mary in particular, followed by two natives of Lebanon, St. Charbel and St. Rafqa; and St. Elijah (Ilyas) are the key figures of the Catholic faith.

  • Introduction: Maronite Catholics retain close political majority in Lebanon, a complex confessional state
    Posted: March 29, 2023 - 12:42pm

    Lebanon, which straddles a 200 km strip of coastal cities, snow-capped mountains and agricultural valleys along the Eastern Mediterranean, is home to the largest concentration of Catholics in the Middle East, living among a larger population of Muslims.

  • Hispano-Mozarabic rite preserves a millennium of cultural history in Spain
    Posted: March 24, 2023 - 12:44pm

    For more than a millennium, the Western Roman Catholic Church has centralized its worship at the Eucharist around the Roman rite, the Mass that can make Catholics who go to church in a country they don’t know at least recognize “the same Mass,” as many would put it, even where they might not understand the language. There are, however, two long-standing exceptions to that liturgical centralization, one of which is the Hispano-Mozarabic liturgical tradition of Spain.

  • The Passion and the people in Oberammergau, Germany
    Posted: December 5, 2022 - 2:53pm

    For 388 years the people of Oberammergau, Germany, a village of 5,400 people at the edge of the Alps, have performed a Passion Play once a decade in fulfillment of a collective vow made at a moment of desperation. What began as a local act of devotion by means of interpretive embodiment and reenactment grew into an international tourist attraction.

  • Chicago suburb hosts 2nd largest feast for Guadalupe
    Posted: May 10, 2022 - 10:26am

    In the northwestern suburbs outside Chicago, on a large property bordered by a cemetery and housing tracts, crowds sometimes exceeding 200,000 have been gathering for decades on freezing December nights in the city of Des Plaines to honor the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe in a manner that echoes the

  • Fraternity, Martyrdom and Peace in Burundi
    Posted: March 29, 2022 - 2:25pm

  • The popularity and paradox of charismatic Catholicism in India and Sri Lanka
    Posted: July 22, 2021 - 11:58am

    The beginnings of the Catholic charismatic movement are often located in a period during the late 1960s, when Catholics received “the baptism of the Holy Spirit” during retreats and conferences at Duquesne and Notre Dame Universities.

  • Pilgrims pray at Matridham Ashram's sacred spaces
    Posted: July 21, 2021 - 3:44pm

    The entire compound of Matridham Ashram, outside the Hindu holy city of Banaras in North India, is considered to be holy ground. While the pavilion is the center of Catholic charismatic religious services, there are three other areas or spaces in the compound that are considered to be especially sacred: the shrine to Mary and the Child Jesus; the Chapel; and what is called the “Darśan Bhavan.”

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