U.S. Catholic

Imagine yourself in the first century, living somewhere in the Roman Empire. As a devotee of the local gods and goddesses, you are intrigued by the message of Paul of Tarsus and the women and men who are his coworkers and coleaders.

Listen on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube History and literature are full of dramatic stories involving deathbed conversions and the administering of what is often called last rites. So perhaps it’s understandable that many people, when they think of the sacrament of anointing the sick, assume it is something reserved for those who are gravely ill or injured, or on the brink of death. Alternatively, they might imagine that the purpose of the sacrament is to pray for a miraculous healing.

Laura Esquivel’s 1989 novel Like Water for Chocolate (Doubleday) captured the public imagination with its story of cuisine prepared with such emotion that those who consumed it were overcome by the same feelings. Whatever deep passion or sentiment the main character, Tita, felt as she cooked, the guests at the meal would experience the same, and their table sharing would be transformed.

Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. John 6:53 I think that even the most devout Catholic can sometimes forget the scandal of transubstantiation—the idea that, at each Mass, we gather around a shared table and take turns eating not just bread and wine, a metaphorical union with God, but literally partaking of Jesus’ body. But in John’s gospel, the crowd has not yet been lulled into complacency by religious ritual.

“She had an insane experience where she wanted to die and decided to devote her life to something [after], and then other people came in and were a part of it. That’s what happened to me with this movie.” In one tongue-in-cheek line, director Caroline Golum draws a connection between the toils and trials of 13th-century mystic and writer Julian of Norwich and her own process of making Revelations of Divine Love (2026), a film that adapts and takes its name from the text of the same name.

For our Sounding Board column, U.S. Catholic asks authors to argue one side of a many-sided issue of importance to Catholics around the country. We also invite readers to submit their responses to these opinion essays—whether agreement or disagreement—in the survey that follows. Click below to take this month’s survey. Spring saw the release of a Barna Group study that should trouble anyone who cares for the church.

As a venture capitalist who has spent more than two decades investing in emerging innovations like quantum computing and artificial intelligence, the recently released encyclical by Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas(On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence), revealed something surprising to me: Technology leaders and the Vatican agree on AI more than many people would expect.

When Charles Carroll became the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence in 1776, he was one of only about 30,000 Catholics in the 13 colonies. At that time, Carroll and his coreligionists endured repression under laws written to suppress the Catholic Church, a faith not shared by many of the other gentlemen who signed the declaration alongside him on August 2, 1776.

Isaiah 55:10–11 Psalm 65:10, 11, 12–13, 14 Romans 8:18–23 Matthew 13:1–23 I don’t have a green thumb. Many friends have gifted us house plants, but most of them do not survive six months in the house. I have tried many things to keep them alive, but they don’t seem to be working. Thankfully, my husband takes care of the vegetable garden outside, and it flourishes every summer. The Parable of the Sower was one of my favorite stories when I was a child growing up in the church.

Since I find inspiration in the devotion and ministry of women religious, I was drawn to Ana Garriga and Carmen Urbita’s Convent Wisdom. I expected a spiritual self-help guide but discovered a complicated love note to Renaissance-era women religious. The book draws from the authors’ research on religious communities and documents the challenges in their studies and personal lives. Garriga and Urbita approach their academic pursuits as a quasi-monastic endeavor.