Editor's note: "The Field Hospital" is NCRonline's newest blog series, covering life in Catholic parishes across the United States. The title comes from the words of Pope Francis: "I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds. ... And you have to start from the ground up."
"The Field Hospital" blog will run twice weekly on NCRonline.org along with feature stories and news reports about parish life in the U.S. If you have a story suggestion, send it to Dan Morris Young (dmyoung@ncronline.org) or Peter Feuerherd (pfeuerherd@ncronline.org).
Parishes in San Bernardino offer inclusive prayers after the horror.
Preparations are now underway for the annual Our Lady of Guadalupe celebrations in the Chicago suburbs.
Protestors who have taken over a church in the Archdiocese of Boston to act against its closure are finding little support in the courts.
St. John the Evangelist Parish in Naples, Fl., provides regular support for a local food pantry,
Two more churches in the Philadelphia suburbs will close.
Someone is vandalizing an alternative breakaway Catholic congregation’s church in New Jersey.
[Regular Catholic press contributor Peter Feuerherd writes from Queens, N.Y.]