Catholics appeared to reinforce our counter-cultural status by marking Epiphany with the Gospel reading of the Wedding Feast at Cana only to be told days later no safe level exists for consuming wine and other alcohol.

If you know you’re risking cancer, if what you’re doing damages cells throughout your body and degrades your DNA — that basic building block of life that scientist Francis Crick, head of the human genome project, called “the language of God” — would you keep doing it?

OTTAWA – A popular and charismatic priest, Fr. Joe LeClair, who pleaded guilty in 2014 to stealing parish funds to pay for a gambling addiction, has returned to ministry in Ottawa.

KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii - Cardinal William J. Levada was arrested in Kailua-Kona, on the island of Hawaii, for driving under the influence of alcohol.

The arrest was made at about midnight Aug. 19. Levada, 79, was released after posting $500 bond. He is due to appear in court Sept. 24.

NAIROBI, Kenya - Clerics in Kenya are backing a presidential decree banning homemade brews, largely blamed for a recent spate of deaths in the East African nation.

Death, chaos, silence, despair… and faith? The post-traumatic stress disorder crisis in Canada’s military is being met with a small core of dedicated men and women who have always been there — the chaplains.

Approximately 800 km northwest of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories is Fort Good Hope, a remote, mostly First Nations community through which the mighty Mackenzie River flows on its way to the Arctic Ocean.

The Good Shepherd doesn’t want Torontonians to forget there are people living on the streets, sleeping in doorways, eating whatever they can find while the rest of us shop for the perfect Christmas morning surprise.

HONOLULU - First, a couple of schools. Then, several U.S. parishes. Now ... a fine craft beer?

Many things have been named after St. Damien de Veuster of Molokai, but none was more surprising than a recent discovery at a Whole Foods store in Hawaii — a bottle of Belgian ale labelled with the likeness of St. Damien.

The beer is called Damiaan Donker. The name pairs the Dutch words for "Damien" and "dark, strong ale."

Several years ago, I was approached by a man who asked me to be his spiritual director. He was in his mid-40s and almost everything about him radiated a certain health. As we sat down to talk, I mentioned that he seemed to be in a very good space. He smiled and replied that, yes, this was so, but it hadn’t always been so. His happiness had its own history ... and its own pre-history. Here’s how he told his story:

BANGALORE, India - Catholic prohibitionists in India's Kerala state have proposed making alcoholism a sin in the nation's largest Christian enclave.

"Alcoholism is a serious problem in Kerala, and we have to take tough measures to counter it," Bishop Sebastian Thekethecheril, chairman of the Temperance Commission of the Kerala Catholic Bishops' Council, told Catholic News Service Feb. 1 during the general assembly of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India in Bangalore.