Magazine

Occasionally, I become so strongly convinced of a certain notion that I almost believe that if everyone would just accept it too, all the problems of the world would be solved. Although I’ve lived long enough to know that no such panacea exists, I still sometimes allow a particularly fascinati

Fresh flowers, lighted candles, live music—can this be the soup kitchen that just hours earlier had fed 400? Yes, a humble church social hall in Lower Manhattan had been transformed to a scene of celebration. The celebration in early December marked the 20th anniversary of a group named the Un

A surprising number of recent books and studies have suggested that young American Catholics are more likely than their immediate elders to gravitate toward traditional devotions. The reasons seem varied. Some surmise that younger Catholics, having grown up without being forced to participate in dev

The Catholic Medical Association has urged U.S. bishops to screen out undesirable candidates for the priesthood, among whom they include homosexuals. According to the C.M.A., if a boy could not play sports because he was overweight or lacked hand-eye coordination, he may be in trouble. The letter su

I rise at 4:30 every morning to get a jump on a 70-mile drive to work. To keep some semblance of order, I try to do the same thing every day at the same time. It starts with getting out of bed, making the coffee and heading outside to pick up the morning newspaper. It is always dark, and I am carefu

Almost 18 years ago I sat on the terrace of a Berkeley coffee bar waiting to meet John Howard Yoder, the well-known Mennonite theologian and ethicist. I was about to leave Berkeley to join the faculty at the University of Notre Dame, where since Vietnam War days Yoder had taught a course on military

The welcome surprise in President Bush’s State of the Union address was his proposal for an Emergency Plan for Aids Relief. The president described the initiative as “a work of mercy beyond all current international efforts to help the people of Africa.” He asked the Congress to co