“When’s the big day?”: The days and times of Catholic wedding masses, 1871-1960
Introduction I have been reading old newspaper articles about Catholic weddings for about seven years now. Throughout that time, I […]
Research essays
The 1968 Scientists’ Statement on Birth Control Encyclical
July 2023 marked the 55th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s promulgation of Humanae Vitae. The 1968 encyclical, which reaffirmed the
A Christmas Day newspaper photo of Thomas and Dawn Bussjaeger
The photo above, of a young family in church, occasionally makes the rounds online. I can’t blame the sharers; it’s
Research essays
A bibliography of genAI-fueled research fraud from 2025
Have you ever thought to yourself, “Boy, I hate all of these stupid AI tools and bots and add-ons. I
Research methods for the periti project
Abstract Although the Second Vatican Council (1962-5) is the most important religious event of the last century, it remains curiously
Research Methods for Charts on Papal Citation Sources
An ongoing project of mine is analyzing papal documents by word count, paragraph count, and citation sources. Given the traction
The Second Vatican Council Documents in American Catholic Newspapers
In James Hitchcock’s 1979 work Catholicism and Modernity, there is a quotation that particularly interested me: One of the choicest
Seder Meals in Catholic Newspapers
This post is an exploration of seder meals as they appeared in the Catholic News Archive. How was the topic
Citation sources and word counts in papal documents
This is an ongoing project that looks at papal documents, what they cite, and how long they are. I used
American Catholic church fires and the Catholic News Archive
This project started off as something entirely different than what it is now. In 2018, the Facebook group Cathedrals: From