I want to stress again the importance of really living what we claim to believe. That needs to be a priority-not just in our personal and family lives but in our churches, our political choices, our business dealings, our treatment of the poor; in other words, in everything we do.

Epic: A Journey Through Church History fills an urgent need for adult Catholics to recover their history as a believing community, debunk false criticisms of their Church, and understand the Christian underpinnings of the modern world. This is a vivid, thorough and engaging program. I heartily recommend it.

We're Catholics before we're Democrats. We're Catholics before we're Republicans. We're even Catholics before we're Americans, because we know that God has a demand on us prior to any government demand on us. And this has been the story of the martyrs through the centuries.

I want to stress again the importance of really living what we claim to believe. That needs to be a priority-not just in our personal and family lives but in our churches, our political choices, our business dealings, our treatment of the poor; in other words, in everything we do.

Creation is more than an accident of dead matter. It's a romance. It has purpose. It sings of the Living God. It bears his signature.