“How Catholic Are We?” asks the April 2016 edition of Cincinnati Magazine. Over the next 20 well-designed pages is a package of well-written and well-researched stories and factoids that quantify the changes in church attendance and population in the greater Cincinnati metropolitan area. The numbers and sidebar stories support the …

It’s one of those infamous dinnertime phone calls. “Hello, Steffen, this is Travis at Marketing Research Associates. You’ve been identified as an opinion leader and we value your opinions. I would like to ask you a few questions.” If you’re a registered voter and have a landline listed in one …

There’s much talk and much more being written these days in the Catholic world about evangelism – sharing the joy of the Gospel message with others. We’ve all met evangelists, seen them on TV or witnessed them giving their witness in any number of forums – including in the political …

When you write it down, you put yourself in the game. So says a writing coach who specializes in getting people past writer’s block. We have embarked on one of the great American adventures in citizenship — a presidential election year. As I write this, the Iowa Caucuses are a …

If anyone doubted that Major League Baseball plays a vital role in the life of this city, the hosting of the 2015 All-Star Game July 14 should have cleared the matter up. The celebrations, the recognition of local heroes and the crowds drawn downtown to fight weather, traffic, media tweeters …

My father’s mother, my grandmother, died when he was only two years old. He never forgot the sense of loss and the pain of growing up without a mother. And he was determined his sons would not forget either. Reading some of Pope Francis’ recent homilies on marriage and relationships …

The resurrection of Jesus Christ should be very much on our minds as Easter passes and we give thanks for our hope of our own resurrection. Death, however, comes before resurrection. The tragic passing at age 17 of Purcell-Marian student Kelsie Crow on Holy Saturday when a stray bullet found …

Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga SDB delivered the LeBlond Lecture March 11 at the Athenaeum. The St. Gregory the Great Chapel was packed like an Easter Vigil Mass, and not just with seminarians, although they were everywhere in that growing place. As you will see elsewhere in this edition, the …

One of the more troubling concerns among journalism management professionals when the millennium arrived involved whether the next generation of reporters and editors would materialize. Through the 80s and into the 90s, most talented journalism students followed the advertising/public relations and marketing track, where there was more opportunity and better …

The most glorious of the seasons of the liturgical and secular calendar embraces Easter. It is glorious, first, because Jesus saved us with His death and resurrection and, secularly, because the world seems to come back to life in the spring. The most heart-warming for most of us is the …