I had the pleasure of working with Colleen Dulle at America magazine, where she serves as one of the publication’s Vatican correspondents. In her new book “Struck Down, But Not Destroyed,” Dulle discusses what it’s been like to be covering the Vatican as a young Catholic amidst the church’s scandals, struggles and crises.

Raised Catholic, artist Anna Meyer struggled for a time with scruples that she wasn’t living her faith correctly or well enough. And she put that experience into her new graphic novel “Saint Catherine,” which tells the story of a Catholic woman just out of college who goes to Mass every Sunday because she’s afraid of what will happen if she doesn’t. When, for the first time in her life, she misses a Sunday to spend time with her boyfriend, and finds herself suddenly haunted by demons (who largely look like an adorable children’s toy).

I realize the world is going a little gaga over the second “Wicked” movie. Still, I highly recommend the four-volume set of novels about Oz that begins with the book on which the movie and musical are based. The books, which tell the story of Elphaba and her descendants as Oz plunges into fascism, bears unsettling similarities to our country today.

This year I’ve been reading a lot of behind-the-scenes books about Broadway musicals. Ted Chapin’s “Everything Was Possible,” about his time as a college intern on Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince’s “Follies,” is a tremendous work. So is Elysa Gardner’s “Magic To Do,” about the making of the Stephen Schwartz and Bob Fosse musical “Pippin.”

Great works of spirituality are like great poetry, so rich with insight and beauty that they make you want to go slow and savor them.

When astronauts return to Earth, they regularly speak of the profound consolation of the experience of being able to look upon the planet as a whole, how so many of the issues that consume us, the differences of border, nationality or religion, are wiped away in favor of a deep sense of our shared humanity.

Why do we read memoirs? For me, part of the appeal is getting a glimpse into the life of someone who means something to me. But I wonder if it isn’t also that I’m hoping they can give me some kind of insight into my own life.

Why do we read memoirs? For me, part of the appeal is getting a glimpse into the life of someone who means something to me. But I wonder if it isn’t also that I’m hoping they can give me some kind of insight into my own life.

Why do we read memoirs? For me, part of the appeal is getting a glimpse into the life of someone who means something to me. But I wonder if it isn’t also that I’m hoping they can give me some kind of insight into my own life.

I have been telling people to read Ed Marciniak’s 1969 book, “Tomorrow’s Christian,” for more than a decade. The book embraces the Second Vatican Council’s vision of a church with its clergy in the midst of God’s people, leading the church from within to transform the world.