The Church has always struggled with sex, but so has everyone else. There aren’t any cultures, religious or secular, pre-modern or modern, post-modern or post-religious, that exhibit a truly healthy sexual ethos. Every church and every culture struggles with integrating sexual energy, if not in its creed about sex, at least in the living out of that creed.

Third Sunday of Lent (Year A) March 23 (Exodus 17:3-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-2, 5-8; John 4:5-42)

When the going gets tough, faith is often the first victim. Negativity, doubt and fear corrode faith and courage like the strongest acid.

NEW YORK - Cardinal Timothy Dolan said March 9 that Pope Francis is asking the Catholic Church to look at the possibility of recognizing civil unions for gay couples, although the Archbishop of New York said that he would be “uncomfortable” if the Church embraced that position.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis appointed an international group of eight cardinals -- including U.S. Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston -- and seven lay experts in the fields of business, management and finance to be the first members of the Vatican's new Council for the Economy.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis will travel to South Korea in August for Asian Youth Day and to preside over the beatification of a large group of Korean martyrs, the Vatican spokesman said.

The Vatican is trying to reassure Catholics and the public that Pope Francis takes the clerical sex abuse crisis seriously in the wake of defensive comments Francis made this week, the first serious bump in the road for a Pope approaching the first anniversary of his election with sky-high approval ratings.

PEORIA, Ill. - A seven-member team of medical experts convoked by the Vatican reported there is no natural explanation for the survival of a child delivered stillborn and whose heart did not start beating until 61 minutes after his birth.

VATICAN CITY - Because his cassock doesn't have a breast pocket, Pope Francis said he wears a cloth pouch under his white robes to carry the crucifix he took from a deceased priest.

For Catholics, the practice of fasting has by and large fallen off the screen, due in large measure to the minimalistic interpretation of what Church members are told “fasting” means: “Take only one full meal. Two smaller meals are permitted as necessary, but eating solid foods between meals is not permitted.”

No one, be that an individual or an institution, controls access to God. Jesus makes this abundantly clear.