Essay

Saints and Divorce

November 25, 2025 Sandra Miesel 43

Divorced saints? How can that be? Catholics are more likely to hear edifying stories about pious wives like St. Catherine of Genoa or Elizabeth Canori-Mora, who stayed with wicked husbands until they prayed their erring […]

Essay

The Glory of Chartres

June 6, 2025 Sandra Miesel 9

This Pentecost weekend, 19,000 pilgrims are making a three-day walk from Paris to reach Chartres Cathedral. Now organized by a French Catholic lay group called Notre Dame de Chrétienté (“Our Lady of Christendom”), the pilgrimage has expanded so much […]

Essay

The Flowers of the Martyrs

December 27, 2024 Sandra Miesel 8

“Then Herod, seeing that he had been tricked by the Magi, was exceedingly angry; and he sent and slew all the boys in Bethlehem and all its neighborhood who were two years old or under…” […]

Books

Distorting Mirrors

May 5, 2024 Sandra Miesel 37

As headlines daily remind us, antagonism towards Jews is the most enduring hatred in our world. The Lost Mirror: Jews and Conversos in Medieval Spain examines one segment of this phenomenon at the time that […]