Easter vigil is celebrated at Cizhong Catholic Church in Yunnan, China, April 4. (Catholics & Cultures/Thomas M. Landy)
When Thomas Landy -- director of the McFarland Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. -- needed to refer his students to resources for his global Catholicism courses, nearly everything he could find regarded Catholicism through a historical lens, leaving him short on contemporary context.
"There's really very little to help someone figure out what it's like to be Catholic in different places around the globe and to think about the relationship between faith and culture in concrete ways," he said. "That teaching experience made me think there was a real need for some resources that can help us better understand the practiced, lived Catholic life today."
So, Landy founded Catholics & Cultures, an encyclopedic Web resource with scholarly articles, videos, photographs, interviews and stories that illustrate the ways ordinary Catholics live their faith throughout the world.