Benedict abolishes the Vatican Christmas Pops Concert: The annual charity concert, organised since its inception by the Prime Time Promotion events agency, will be transferred to Monaco beginning this year, the paper reported. Starting in 1993, Italian and international pop stars gathered annually in the Paul VI auditorium for the Yuletide bash. And every year…

The excellent Evangelical Catholicism blog has a couple of posts of note up now – one commenting on R.R. Reno’s post on theology graduate programs discussed here, and another on a Southern Baptist’s reaction to the Christian Century article on 6 recent converts to Catholicsm. It’s good, intelligent stuff. On the former, blog author Michael…

We have followed the story of St. John’s parish in Darien, CT for a while, now, haven’t we? The pastor, Fr. Michael Jude Fay was suspected by his associate pastor, Fr. Michael Madden, and the bookkeeper, Bethany D’Erario of financial shenanigans and other things. The initial scenario seems to be that Madden, frustrated with the…

All right now, time to share some book notes. I’m currently sort of obsessed with late medieval/renaissance Italy, trying to sort things out in my head. What it all comes down to for me – and has really ever since graduate school – is trying to understand how God works in, through and despite the…

More from Beliefnet and our partners
More from Beliefnet and our partners