Beyond the Benedict option: how Christians can engage while being counter-cultural
The secularization paradigm is no longer sufficient to explain our times.
Capitalism and the economic memories of Pope Francis
Argentines have experienced a very different form of capitalism.
Life without work: Will we be ready?
Catholics would do well to address not only climate change and inequality but also another looming inconvenient truth on the horizon: technological unemployment.
Of Many Things
What do you do for a living?
Sometimes I have been tempted to respond, as the late New York Times columnist David Carr once quipped, “I write emails.”
Letters
Reply All: Join the Conversation
‘I suggest that this is the state of the abortion controversy: There is no debate.’
Editorials
Editors: Channeling election angst
It does not take long to see that frustration and anger are part of what is going on in contemporary America.
Books
Our National Scripture
‘The Age of the Crisis of Man,’ by Mark Greif
A New Secular Way
‘After Buddhism,’ by Stephen Batchelor
Come and See
‘Frank Browne,’ by David and Edwin Davison; ‘A Call to Vision,’ by Don Doll, S.J.
Film
The complicated life of Jesse Owens
“Race” is a movie about personal victory and national guilt—neither Hitler nor Franklin Roosevelt ever shook Owens’s hand.
Poetry
Just a Day
Stream crossing, train whistle among the beech leaves rustling and a vulture swings down low over the boardwalk when the engine light barrels over the causeway and the geese lift over the dormant buds,a shimmer in the water’s mild ripple, in the liquid where the deer b
The Word
Gospel: The Time to Repent
Sunday’s readings: “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did” (Lk 13:3)
Current Comment
‘Horace and Pete’ dramatizes struggles of a broken U.S. economy and politics
No one’s failures are absolved or explained away; they remain sins rather than being reduced to pathologies.
Mexico’s Coca-Cola Problem
Mexicans consume almost 500 cans of sugar-loaded soda per person every year.
Sexual abuse by U.N. Peacekeepers leads to both reform and moral outrage
If the United Nations is not able to police its own ranks, how can it be trusted to restore a culture of lawfulness in the Central African Republic?
Faith
Gospel: The Time to Repent
Sunday’s readings: “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did” (Lk 13:3)
Of Other Things
Stop Hazing Now
Undergraduate misbehavior is a ‘progressively worsening reality.’
Signs Of the Times
Turmoil on Papal Child Protection Commission
Members of a papal commission set up to advise Pope Francis on the protection of children “decided” on Feb. 6 that one of its members, Peter Saunders, should “take a leave of absence.” Saunders has been frequently quoted by the press in criticism of specific church decisions
Pope and Patriarch Meet in Cuba
The surprise announcement from Rome of the upcoming meeting between Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and Pope Francis “shows definitively Francis’ vocation as a pontiff, a bridge-builder,” Kevin Ahern, an assistant professor of religious studies at Manhattan College said on Feb. 5.&ldquo
Will 2016 be the year of the Great Euro-Fracture?
Europe is fracturing and could well break the three-century-old British Union.
Finding Hope, Escaping the Gang Life at Church in Ciudad Jurez
Esteban Alanis, 23, once ran with a local gang known as Los Parqueros, which would accost people for their cash and cellphones in a working-class neighborhood of southeast Ciudad Juárez. He called the crimes “easy money,” while gang activities offered a sense of belonging and an adolesc
News Briefs
Haiti’s Catholic bishops urged a negotiated solution to the country’s political crisis as President Michel Martelly’s term ended on Feb. 7 and elections to find a successor were indefinitely delayed. • Applicants have until May 14 to vie for a $22,000 prize in a pontifical con
Syrian Suffering
Bill O’Keefe, Catholic Relief Services’ vice president for government relations and advocacy, in December toured C.R.S. and Caritas Internationalis efforts to respond to the continuing refugee crisis in Europe in Greece, Serbia and Macedonia. O’Keefe was astonished by the sight of
New Hispanic Leaders
The first class of 60 students from the Archdiocese of Atlanta has completed a three-year formation program in Spanish through the University of Dallas, earning a pastoral theology certificate. In a recent graduation ceremony at Holy Spirit Church, Auxiliary Bishop Luis R. Zarama of Atlanta sent for
Vatican Dispatch
Pope Francis to Christian world: We are one
‘The mercy of God will renew our relationships.’
Washington Front
Character Questions
As this is written, the Iowa caucuses are finally moving the presidential campaign into the hands, heads and hearts of voters. Pundits who have been consistently wrong are offering new explanations and projections. Here is a crazy prediction for a crazy campaign. A Republican demolition derby yields
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts