A good deal of the zing has gone out of the race for the presidency now that both John McCain and Bill Bradley have withdrawn. I didn’t realize the intellectual loss until last month, as I listened to Al Gore being interviewed by Jim Lehrer. Lehrer brought up the topic of abortion. Gore chose

As if the social ills of Africa were not enough (ranging from military dictatorships, corruption, poverty, crime, unemployment, hunger, wars, ethnic strife, malaria and tuberculosis), H.I.V.-AIDS has become the latest deadly, silent killer, claiming an estimated 13.7 million people in sub-Saharan Af

I’m not sure what to do with the Easter season. I’m more comfortable, if that’s the right word, with Lent’s symbolic richness—dust, ashes, desert, wandering—than I am with the joy of the resurrection. Not surprisingly, at this time every year I’m less jubila

Chicago Archdiocese Takes Part in No Sweatshop’ CampaignChicago’s cardinal said his archdiocese has joined a national anti-sweatshop campaign because the church is called in a jubilee year to proclaim liberty to captives,’ including those enslaved to undignified working conditions.

A quarter of a century may be just a dot in a nation’s history or a mere blip in the history of the world, but for over one million Vietnamese immigrants who have made their home in the United States in the aftermath of the Communists’ victory over what was known as the Republic of Vietn

After World War I the victorious powers cobbled together a new kingdoma constitutional monarchyout of the collapsed Austro-Hungarian Empire It would later be known as Yugoslavia or Land of the South Slavs The new polity was a multi-ethnic state made up of subnational units of Serbs Croats and S

Lex Orandi, Lex CredendiAlong with many Catholics I was proud of Pope John Paul II’s act of courage and humility in confessing the sins of the church and asking forgiveness. Such an acknowledgment was particularly appropriate in this Lenten season, when the Passion accounts candidly acknowledg

St. Augustine was probably not the first, and he was certainly not the last to remark that even pagans believe that Jesus died. It is only Christians who believe that after death he rose to a new life. The joy that is awakened by this belief in the Resurrection is not supposed to be just a seasonal

The most challenging, the most distressing and yet the most strangely consoling book I have read this year is Annie Dillard’s For the Time Being. It is many things: a string of knotty episodes, a litany of loss, a catalogue of catastrophe, a cry for meaning. Crisscrossing the stories of wise r

Channel surfing a few months ago, I was mildly astonished to come across a rerun of Davey and Goliath, the Eisenhower-era claymation series produced, as I recall, under the auspices of the Lutheran Church. For those of you who weren’t TV-addicted children in the 1960’s, Davey and Goliath

Isaias crossed the small parking lot next to the church and approached the rectory. On an open door was written, "Proyecto Guadalupano: a Program of the Proyecto Pastoral at Dolores Mission." In the small office, he sat down opposite Arturo López, the program director, and began to tell h

Raymond Maloney S J a professor of systematic theology at the Milltown Institute Dublin accomplishes much in this short book on a vexing issue in the history of theology the kind of knowledge that Christ possessed and what that knowledge says about the way God became a human being The issue of

Thousands Form Human Chain Around Capitol Against DebtThousands of Americans formed a human chain around the U.S. Capitol on April 9 to urge debt relief for the world’s poorest nations. Sign-bearing union workers, nuns and studentsmany wearing cloth or paper chains to symbolize the enslaving c

Despite the strong economy that has been a boon for millions of Americans, many others remain locked in a poverty that includes hunger. All but ignored in the current political debate, this dark reality served as the background of a three-day conference held in Washington, D.C., in late February. Ca

The Mystic Heart is as an excellent survey and overview of the present state of interfaith or multifaith spirituality at the end of the 20th century Wayne Teasdale the author of several books and many articles on interreligious topics and co-editor with George F Cairns of the recent The Communit

A woman is hidden behind the white shower curtain. Judging by the sounds, I assume she’s soaping herself. Today is my first day volunteering at the Gift of Grace, a home where Mother Teresa’s nuns and volunteers care for poor women with AIDS. When I arrived earlier this morning, I asked

A number of years ago, when I was a parish priest, a woman preparing for baptism at Easter asked if she could speak with me privately. There were various issues that had been bothering her, and she wished to discuss them. I had come to know her somewhat during the preceding months and appreciated th

I’ve just finished reading Edward Hirsch’s How to Read a Poem (Harcourt Brace, 352p, $23 hardcover; Harvest, $15 paperback) with its wonderfully subversive and liberating subtitle, And Fall in Love With Poetry, andtrue to its promiseI have just fallen in love with poetry all over again.