Magazine

First Lady and Pope Talk of Peace and ViolenceLaura Bush, wife of the U.S. president, and one of her 24-year-old twin daughters, Barbara Bush, met the pope at the Vatican on Feb. 9 during a brief stop in Rome on the way to the Olympics. After the meeting, she told reporters traveling with her that p

In the early 13th century, Francis of Assisi stood before Pope Innocent III and asked him to sanction a new way of life, which ultimately became a new religious order with a twist. The Franciscans would not be cloistered monks, but active brothers living in towns and countrysides, sustained by alms.

Some might find irony in the fact that at the time the National Pastoral Life Center was issuing a comprehensive report on the burgeoning numbers of laypersons serving in various parish capacities, the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops this past November was having difficulti

There is definitely a “peace dividend” to disaster relief, as I found in mid-December during my second visit to Banda Aceh, the large city in northern Sumatra (Indonesia) where over 118,000 lives were lost on Dec. 26, 2004. That was the day of the multiple catastrophes of a huge earthqua

"Ruined for life”—that is the humorously ironic phrase used of young women and men who give one or two years of their lives to service in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. The phrase was coined by Jack Morris, the Jesuit credited with having started it all—of whom more later. Althou

Prohibiting men with certain characteristics from being ordained to the priesthood is nothing new in church discipline. More than 40 years ago, when I was still in the seminary, church law laid down a number of such impediments. According to the theology of the time, the office of the priesthood req

Respectful Appreciation

In Aquinas in Africa (2/6), Thomas F. O’Meara, O.P., suggests that an African attitude toward technology and economic growth will influence how Africans think about Christianity. When I read this statement, it seemed to me that the opposite was true: that