Check out these recent articles from around the web:

A Call for National Service by E.J. Dionne: “There are no quick fixes to our sense of disconnection, but there may be a way to restore our sense of what we owe each other across the lines of class, race, background — and, yes, politics and ideology.”

Pope at Mass: We encounter the Living God through His wounds: “To meet the living God we must tenderly kiss the wounds of Jesus in our hungry, poor, sick, imprisoned brothers and sisters. Study, meditation and mortification are not enough to bring us to encounter the living Christ. Like St. Thomas, our life will only be changed when we touch Christ’s wounds present in the poor, sick and needy. This was the lesson drawn by Pope Francis during morning Mass at Casa Santa Marta Wednesday as he marked the Feast of St. Thomas Apostle.”

CCHD brings Gospel to struggling communities by MSW, NCR: John Carr, who stepped down last year after 25 years at the bishops’ conference, where his job included overseeing the campaign, told NCR, “The mission and work of CCHD is more essential than ever in light of the priorities and pastoral leadership of Pope Francis.”  The campaign is “the best example in the U.S. of Pope Francis’ vision of a church ‘of and for the poor,’ ” Carr said. “CCHD puts into action every day Pope Francis’ call for the church to get out of herself and bring our commitment to the poor ‘to the streets.’ Francis says, ‘Getting out in the street runs the risk of an accident, but frankly I prefer a church that has accidents a thousand times to a church that gets sick’ from being turned in on itself.”

Home Economics: The Link Between Work-Life Balance and Income Equality by Stephen Marche, The Atlantic: “When men aren’t part of the discussion about balancing work and life, outdated assumptions about fatherhood are allowed to go unchallenged and, far more important, key realities about the relationship between work and family are elided. The central conflict of domestic life right now is not men versus women, mothers versus fathers. It is family versus money.”

Pope Francis’ Saintly Politics by E.J. Dionne: “By reminding Catholics of which aspects of the past he wants to celebrate, Francis has pointed the way for a more open, less divided church that examines the present and looks to the future with hope, not fear.”

30 killed in school attack in northeast Nigeria: “Islamic militants attacked a boarding school in northeast Nigeria before dawn Saturday, killing 29 students and one teacher. Some of the pupils were burned alive in the latest school attack blamed on a radical terror group, survivors said.”

Saints John Paul II and John XXIII by Fr. James Martin, SJ: “Two things we must remember about the saints: First, they were not perfect. And second, as today’s announcement reminds us, they are not cookie-cutter versions of one another. John Paul II and John XXIII may appeal to different types of Catholics because they were different types of people. And what the church is telling us today is that both types are saints.”

Money Alone Won’t Make Men Better Parents by Marc Tracy, TNR: “Similarly to the Mommy Wars, the Daddy Wars can’t take place just among people who are already daddies.”

Gift of Knowledge Helps to Sanctify the World Around Us by Mark Shea: “Knowledge is about seeking to trace out the grand design of God in the cathedral of creation and redemption — and of our place in it. Through the exercise of knowledge, we discern God’s purpose in our lives and our place in his purposes.”