Magazine

All too often significant court cases fail to arouse universal interest Confusing jargon and endless deliberations conspire to numb the public to these cases despite their importance The class-action suit known as Wilder which plodded through courts for 26 years could have been one of thema ca

R my Rougeau has written a fresh and surprising narrative about the monastic life It is a novel or perhaps a series of linked short stories But form is not what counts here The odd angle of vision is what makes this book worthwhile Rougeau rsquo s story deals with young Paul Seneschal a Canad

Visiting friends in New England recently I listened to their lament about parish life Boring liturgies irrelevant homilies insipid musicall this from devout Catholics tempted to bolt to a local Protestant church for a feeling of community and worship It rsquo s a familiar scenario to most of us

Destruction and violence are before me there is strife and clamorous discord rdquo how sadly current ldquo When you have done all you have been commanded say lsquo We are unprofitable servants we have done what we were obliged to do rsquo rdquo Habakkuk rsquo s cry and Jesus rsquo wor

The bridge over the St. Lawrence River in Canada hangs in the twilight, a connection to some different sense of time and space. It is the summer of 2000 and my last day in Montreal. I’ve been invited by a French Canadian friend to travel with him across the river. My plan is to visit Kahnawake

From a high ridge in Nimule, Sudan, I looked across a quiet valley to the Nile Riverthe source of life for thousands who pull their living from its muddy waters. In a patch of yellow grass a few feet from where I stood lay the tarnished casings of spent artillery shells, fired only recently at plane

In a recent article in America (Patient No More, 7/16), Kevin W. Wildes, S.J., our friend and colleague at Georgetown University, celebrated a requiem for the traditional, patient-centered ethic of medicine. In its place he proposed a new ethic of social contract, one oriented to societal need rathe