I loved Catherine before I loved The Dialogue. That is not unusual. You can know a saint’s story and still not know how to hear her when she teaches. She wrote the book near the end of her life, in 1377 and 1378. Suzanne Noffke’s translation is the one I keep. People open it, meet…
Karen’s Voice Union with Christ did not turn Catherine inward forever. It sent her toward a Church in trouble. For most of her life the popes did not live in Rome. They lived in Avignon, on the Rhône. Warren Carroll calls that chapter “Popes Away From Rome.” The see of Peter was not sitting by…
Karen’s Voice We have met the woman. We have seen that she was not a cloistered nun. Now we have to face the part that makes a modern listener flinch. Raymond of Capua records practices that startle us: a hair shirt, later an iron chain, little sleep, deliberate bodily penances. That is his book. We…
Karen’s Voice Last time we left Catherine in the kitchen. She had refused the marriage arranged for her. We said the white robe and the black cape were coming. They come. She is clothed in the Dominican habit at San Domenico, and then she walks back down the hill to Fontebranda. Same house. Same Lapa….
The Quiet Evidence of Grace How to Recognize Genuine Growth I wanted to concretely talk about this a little bit outside of the reality of the fall and the example that Our Lord gives us through the Stations of the Cross. Once you have made an act of mental assent to your failure, right, that’s…
Karen’s Voice I have lived with Catherine of Siena for a long time. She is my patroness. I have studied The Dialogue for years.1 In the Jubilee of 2000 I went to Siena and venerated her relics at San Domenico. I thought I knew her. Then I sat down with Sigrid Undset. Undset approaches Catherine…