As millions of pilgrims flocked to the famed Ugandan shrine in Namugongo in the days leading to commemoration of the country’s 45 Christian martyrs, local authorities prevented an attempted terror attack in what they said was a swift secret service operation, possibly saving hundreds from imminent death.

Although we might tend to use different vocabulary in pastoral contexts, as Catholics we believe that marriage is at its core an exchange of consent, which is indeed a “contract” in the broad sense of the term.

A god to be feared but not loved would be a god who dealt in negatives, but we know that there are no negatives in God, that Creation came into being with the “yes” of his intention, and it is sustained to this very second by that continued affirmation.

Archbishop William E. Lori in December received a photograph of Ruth in his prime taken during a visit with his New York Yankees teammates to St. Mary’s Industrial School in Southwest Baltimore. Ginny Black of Mount Pleasant, S.C., who discovered it among her late mother’s possessions, mailed the photo to Archbishop Lori.

An interest in life at the Church’s administrative center is fine; an obsession with it, fueled by ill-informed blogs and social media, is not.