In November 1949 the year after the publication of his bestselling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain Thomas Merton dropped a note to his old college friend Robert Lax about the latest news from the Abbey of Gethsemani quot People keep writing from India we should start a monastery there

In the more than 40 years since Vatican II the short document on the relationship of the Catholic Church to other religions Nostra Aetate has emerged as especially important Its section on the Jewish people suggests that mutual understanding and appreciation can best be furthered by biblical and

The cosmos of natural science today moves on a scale unimaginable to ancient prophets evangelists and makers of creeds Many thoughtful people have now concluded that the universe has outgrown the biblical God who is said to be its creator To them the content of Christian faith seems hopelessly in

Just Love’s thesis is that justice is central to sexual morality, especially justice in the sense of respect for the real identity and needs of the other.

Last month students in my class on women and Catholicism spent an evening at a Catholic Worker House in South Bend Ind We prepared a meal shared it with the guests and listened to an after-dinner talk by Margaret Pfeil a staff member at the house and my colleague at Notre Dame Pfeil spoke abou

American Catholics have persisted in viewing both U S secular and church history as primarily a movement of Northern European people and institutions westward across the barren plains But the deeper truth that inexorably is catching up with us is that it is also increasingly the history of movem