Ron Murphy, S. J., a Georgetown University German professor, was returning from the Catholic University of America, where Pope Francis had celebrated the canonization of St. Junípero Serra, when a woman approached him. “Father, Father,” she exclaimed, “this pope is wonderful. This
In the fall of 2013, gentrification arrived in my working-class North Oakland neighborhood. The rent ticked up month after month. Then one day, the landlord called to notify us he was putting the house on the market. Because of an influx of highly paid tech workers into the Bay Area, the house liste
It has become a commonplace of spirituality that we are meant to live in the present. Thoreau, whose spirituality is so widely revered today, aspired to “toe that line,” and found support for his aspiration in the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most ancient spiritual classics. Today, countles
Catholic justices begin new SCOTUS term with Red Mass
Exposing Euthanasia“Tired of Living” (9/21), by John Conley, S.J., regarding euthanasia in the Netherlands, is on target. But there’s trouble here in the United States as well. Dr. William Toffler, a physician in Portland, Ore., in a Wall Street Journal op-ed (8/18), recently expos
My grandmother’s rosary was of amethyst-colored beads and a small silver crucifix, gray-black with tarnish. She kept it on the bureau in her bedroom near a holy card of St. Jude and a talcum powder box made of imitation satin. She’d put it in a special pouch—an old change purse, ac