Religious Life

Article

A Good Place to Lose Your Mind

"In twenty-five years as a caregiver for elderly Trappist monks, I’ve experienced countless times the grace that emerges in vulnerability."

By Isaac Slater

June 30, 2026

The Last Word

Religion

Religious Life

Article

Being Christian Means Being Alive

Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe discusses his six decades as a Dominican and the point of being a Christian today.

By Vincent Ray M. Daut

June 29, 2026

Article

The Way You Let Go

October 2025 saw the first known transfer of Church-owned land to a tribal nation as an explicit act of reparation. What can the experiment teach the rest of the Church?

By Regina Munch

May 26, 2026

Article

More than a Real Estate Deal

In 2016, I became a Trappist novice at St. Benedict's Monastery. Now, this place of peace is being purchased by a zealot for war: Palantir CEO Alex Karp.

By Evan Bednarz

March 21, 2026

Article

Pope Leo, OSA

To be Augustinian is to be shaped by a deep sense of both interiority and community. That sense will likely be at the heart of Leo XIV's papacy.

By Terence Sweeney

May 20, 2025

Pope Leo XIV

Religion

Religious Life

Feature

The Entry into Darkness

A visit to the Simonopetra Monastery reveals the challenging work of monastic living: What does it mean to "empty" ourselves?

By Benedict Coleridge

May 14, 2025

Europe

Religious Life

Religion

Feature

Cloistered Freedom

In the Convent of Santa Clara in Carmona, Spain, fourteen nuns carry out ancient traditions with new faces.

By Laura León

February 17, 2025

Women in the Church

Religious Life

Arts

Article

A Divine Seed

Judith A. Merkle's book asks: What is the role of religious life is in an increasingly secular, disaffiliated world?

By Jack Nuelle

April 19, 2024

Religious Life

Books

Secularism and Modernity

Rescuer of the Written Word

On this episode, Fr. Columba Stewart talks about his work preserving manuscripts with persecuted and endangered communities across the world.

Religious Life

Travel

Listen: From Bernalda to Bleecker St.

Helene Stapinski reads her feature about Fr. Luigi Portarulo, a young Italian priest making his way in New York City.

U.S. Catholicism

Religious Life

Vatican

Article

The Eyes Have It

These priests who argue endlessly against washing the feet of women during the Mandatum on Holy Thursday, I wonder, do they ever look up during the ritual?

By Fr. Nonomen

April 6, 2023

U.S. Catholicism

Pope Francis

Religious Life

Feature

Renunciation and Christian Happiness

If union with God in self-sacrificing love is the highest end of a life, providing true happiness, how can we achieve it?

By Zena Hitz

March 20, 2023

Religious Life

Philosophy

Lent

Feature

… making simple vows in 1964 , I took the name Luke, partly because it was biblical and … someday teach. Thus, my authorial name, Luke Timothy Johnson. Holding on to my monk name is … Luke Timothy … Johnson … Luke Timothy Johnson on his time with the …

By Luke Timothy Johnson

February 3, 2022

Religious Life

Nonfiction

Feature

Learning from Las Hermanas

Looking back at Las Hermanas’ role in the three Encuentros can help those committed to synodality better understand the task ahead.

By Amirah Orozco

January 10, 2022

The Varieties of Religious Community Today

On this special podcast episode, we’re joined by the editors and writers who helped create our package of stories on Catholic religious communities.

U.S. Catholicism

Religious Life

Article

Sisters on the Move

The Dominican Sisters of Peace spend their lives constantly on the move, changing places and customs to meet the emerging needs of the people of God.

By Ann Killian

November 13, 2021

The Varieties of Religious Community Today

Religious Life

Feature

Silence in the City

The simplicity of monastic practice feels right for the chaos of our time.

By Kaya Oakes

November 8, 2021

The Varieties of Religious Community Today

Religious Life

Spirituality

Feature

Embracing Uncertainty

The Norbertines in Santa Maria de la Vid understand that moving forward means adopting a flexible style of living and working in the Albuquerque community.

By Griffin Oleynick

November 2, 2021

Religious Life

The Varieties of Religious Community Today

Article

The Varieties of Religious Community Today

In the face of precariousness and uncertainty, religious orders and lay Catholic communities model how to live in relation with both one other and God.

By The Editors

October 27, 2021

The Varieties of Religious Community Today

U.S. Catholicism

Religious Life

Laity

Article

Where Two or More Are Gathered

An introduction to the religious communities special issue

By The Editors

October 27, 2021

The Varieties of Religious Community Today

Religious Life

Spirituality

Article

Conscience & Confidence

The Immaculate Heart of Mary sisters stood up for themselves, and for social justice, in the vibrant L.A. culture of the 1960s.

By Anna Harrison

August 18, 2021

Religious Life

Movies

Women in the Church

Article

‘But to be Young Was Very Heaven’

“Did a sensitive, intellectually alert priest see in me a young protégé, perhaps a future seminarian? Or was a lonely man impelled by a less salutary desire?”

By Robert P. Imbelli

April 1, 2021

Religious Life

Article

Examining the Encyclical

Catholics should read Francis’s new encyclical not just for what it says, but also for how it says it.

By Massimo Faggioli

October 9, 2020

Article

Freedom in Solitude

The medieval nobleman-turned-hermit St. Romuald of Ravenna, founder of the Camaldolese Order, viewed confinement not as restriction but as gift.

By Griffin Oleynick

April 16, 2020

Spirituality

Religious Life

Coronavirus

Article

Privileged & Vulnerable

Our residence for retired priests in New York has already experienced two deaths. Even so, Christ is present in routine, natural beauty, and above all, prayer.

By Robert P. Imbelli

April 13, 2020

Article

The Art-House at Home

COVID-19 restrictions have had a devastating impact on independent cinemas. But thankfully, a special program of films about nuns is now available online.

By Patrick Preziosi

April 3, 2020

Movies

Religious Life

Spirituality

Article

The American Parish Today

The U.S. church is not so much in decline as undergoing a profound transition, a reality we can and should joyfully embrace.

By The Editors

March 25, 2020

The American Parish Today

Article

A Spectrum of Dualisms

From the archives: Alice Mayhew writes about Thomas Merton’s literary forays.

By Alice Mayhew

February 5, 2020

Article

A Disorderly Institution

By dragging Benedict into schemes like Cardinal Sarah’s book about celibacy, the anti-Francis faction reveals deep flaws in the current emeritus papacy.

By Austen Ivereigh

January 15, 2020

Article

Pilgrims

Had I known before that the greatest gift of the road was the love of another human being? Of course I had. But I had not fully understood.

By Kathleen Hill

January 10, 2020

Spirituality

Religious Life

Death and Dying

Article

The New Abbess

A visit to the Trappistines of Mount St. Mary’s in rural Massachusetts provides hope and joy in dark times.

By Andrew J. Bacevich

January 9, 2020

Article

Expectant Waiting

If we want guidance on how to prepare for the final fulfillment of our hope this Advent, we might turn to the church’s monastic tradition.

By Jacob Riyeff

December 14, 2019

Spirituality

Religious Life

Liturgy

Article

The Last Shakers?

The Shakers, who arrived in America in 1774, are a religious community facing extinction. Their decline means nothing less than the end of an idea of heaven.

By Kate Lucky

November 28, 2019

Article

Religious Sisters on the Border

The sisters I met along the border know well the intractability of poverty, disease, and violence. That does not keep them from working to relieve them.

By Lynda McDonnell

October 11, 2019

Article

Boot Camp for Nuns

I’m nineteen years old, the year is 1958, and I’ve already made it through the first nine months of probation. More than anything in the world I want to be a saint.

By Sr. Helen Prejean

September 3, 2019

Article

Small Graces

A city is noisy, dirty, sometimes cruel, sometimes surprisingly kind, always restless, constantly building over its own past. Like all things, it needs prayer.

By B. D. McClay

July 8, 2019

Spirituality

Religious Life

Article

Women & the Diaconate

The Catholic Church now has a stronger theology of women deacons than it did during the fraught time of Paul VI. But now political conditions are less auspicious.

By Massimo Faggioli

June 10, 2019

Article

Blind Spots

In late 2014 I entered a monastery in Italy, intending to stay for good. A year later, I left. I had become a victim of clerical abuse.

By Griffin Oleynick

May 21, 2019

Sexual-abuse Crisis

Religious Life

Priesthood

Article

By His Wounds

This Lent, the art of Lucio Fontana intensifies the insights of monastic spirituality. Even our worst crimes are pardoned by Christ’s extravagant mercy.

By Griffin Oleynick

April 5, 2019

Article

Eamon Duffy’s ‘Royal Books and Holy Bones’

Essays by a master medievalist, ranging from painting to purgatory, monasticism to monarchy highlight the fact that Christianity has long been materialistic

By Francis Oakley

February 20, 2019

Feature

Taming the Demon

Our modern obsession with workplace efficiency has a simple answer: the prayerful, peaceful pace of Benedictine monastic labor

By Jonathan Malesic

February 2, 2019

Article

Why We Came

We asked you to tell us your stories of why you came, left, or stayed in the church. In this final installment, two readers share their conversion to Catholicism

By The Editors

January 17, 2019

Spirituality

Religious Life

U.S. Catholicism

Feature

The People at the Center of the World

The Met’s permanent collection can tell you a great deal about powerful empires. The Armenia exhibit gives us a view from the margins

By Robert Rubsam

December 23, 2018

Arts

Religious Life

Spirituality

Article

Merton & Blake, Revisited

Thomas Merton and William Blake were unorthodox religious visionaries, joined by a shared predilection for the paradoxes at the heart of Christianity

By Michael W. Higgins

December 8, 2018

Article

‘The Nun’s Story’ Revisited

However much we may admire the austerities and asceticism of pre-Vatican II religious life, the film depicts a closed world to which we cannot return

By Paul Baumann

December 4, 2018

Article

‘Make Up for Their Many Defects’

St. Francis, whose feast is October 4, somehow managed to reconcile his love for the church with his understanding of it as an institution corrupted by power

By Paul Moses

October 3, 2018

Clericalism

Religious Life

Article

How a Monk Learns Mercy

The Rule of Benedict, embraced so radically by Thomas Merton, created a Scripture-shaped world suffused with reminders of God’s mercy

By Luke Timothy Johnson

September 26, 2018

Spirituality

Theology

Religious Life

Feature

Getting to Gethsemani

How to live a life of separation and then share the fruits of your contemplation with the rest of the world?

By G. W. Smith

May 17, 2018

Spirituality

Religious Life

Article

Action Heroes

Bernard McGinn is at pains to erase caricatures of Spanish mystics

By Lawrence S. Cunningham

May 17, 2018

Books

Spirituality

Religious Life

Article

Do Not Turn a Blind Eye

Sister Diana Muñoz Alba challenged the UN, religious leaders, U.S. and Mexican governments, and all of us to do more to prevent the suffering of migrants.

By Paul Moses

May 3, 2018