Free Republic

Sid Dumuk got Sunday Mass rolling, instructing worshipers to greet their neighbors before singing the entrance procession. Then Steve Armatis read from the Old Testament, Mary Webb from the New Testament, and the Rev. Art Willie gave the Gospel according to Luke. Later, 14 people in khakis and skirts fanned out across the church offering communion wafers and wine. All told, about 20 people actively led Mass that crisp Sunday morning at St. Maria Goretti's parish in San Jose - and only one of them was a Roman Catholic priest. Lay ecclesial ministers are flourishing throughout Catholic parishes, and the...

THE CORNERSTONES OF ST. AUGUSTINE PARISH IN REPUBLIC, MICHIGAN are round, flaky pie crust pockets crammed with beef, pork, potatoes, and other vegetables. Monthly sales of pasties (pronounced pass-tees), as the trademark Upper Peninsula culinary creations are called, fund operating costs at this 60-household parish that has been without a resident priest for 20 years.Franciscan Sister Margey Schmelzle, pastoral coordinator at St. Augustine and its neighboring parish, Sacred Heart, works hard to ensure parishioners are physically and spiritually well fed. But while there are pasties-a-plenty in this rural former mining town, priests are in short supply. At times Schmelzle has...

WARSAW, Poland -- Stanislaw Lem, a popular science fiction writer whose novel "Solaris" was filmed twice, died Monday in his native Poland, his secretary said. He was 84. Lem died in Krakow, Wojciech Zemek told The Associated Press. Zemek did not give other details or the cause of death, citing only Lem's advanced age. Lem was one of the most popular science fiction authors of recent decades to write in a language other than English, and his works were translated from Polish into more than 40 other languages. His books have sold 27 million copies. His best-known work, "Solaris," was...

KRAKOW, Poland (Reuters) - Polish author Stanislaw Lem, one of the world's leading science-fiction writers, died on Monday in his home city of Krakow at the age of 84 after a battle with heart disease. Lem, whose books have sold more than 27 million copies and have been translated into more than 40 languages, won widespread acclaim for "The Cyberiad," stories from a mechanical world ruled by robots, first published in English in 1974. "Solaris," published in 1961 and set on an isolated space station, was made into a film epic 10 years later by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. A...

WARSAW -- Stanislaw Lem, a science-fiction writer whose novel "Solaris" was made into a movie starring George Clooney, died yesterday in his native Poland, his secretary said. He was 84. Mr. Lem died in a Krakow hospital from heart failure "connected to his old age," Wojciech Zemek said. He gave no other details. Mr. Lem was one of the most popular science-fiction authors of recent decades to write in a language other than English, and his works were translated from Polish into more than 40 other languages. His books have sold 27 million copies. "A great artist has died, a...