By Michael Patrick O’Brien– When I was a boy, my Trappist monk friends shared their homemade wheat bread with me. It was a precious moment of monastic hospitality, made even…

By Gary Topping– (Editor’s note: a previous version of this article appeared in the Intermountain Catholic. Part one of this story is available here.) Mary Bell and the McDougall family learned…

By Gary Topping– (Editor’s note: a previous version of this story appeared in the Intermountain Catholic.) When a young man announces his intention to enter the priesthood, we are filled…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Don’t let the whole Boy Monk persona thing fool you. I have a good old-fashioned nasty Irish temper including, on occasion, a very sharp tongue. Several…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Wisdom, of course, can come from many unusual places and from very unexpected sources. Yet, most people still are surprised when I point to a Catholic…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– The Chinese zodiac assigns an animal and its unique characteristics to each year of a rotating 12-year cycle. If I had such calendar naming rights, I’d…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Whether you celebrate it as a Christian holiday or not, I think the true meaning of Christmas is that some 2,000 years ago, a force for…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– (Editor’s note: this is an excerpt from Monastery Mornings, published in 2021 by Paraclete Press.) Once when I was a boy, my family and I found…

By Gary Topping– At this writing, we are well into the holiday season, with Thanksgiving behind us, Christmas on the horizon, and lots of holiday get-togethers in between.  So with…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Most people knew him as Father Alan. Originally, however, he was Francis Joseph Hohl, born in Chicago in 1926 and raised in Rib Lake, Wisconsin, a…