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Poetry
Simon Perchik
You can’t tell from these cloudswhy this afternoon was set on fireis burning through some lullaby you’re singing to yourselfby gathering a few leaves, some twigsfor the gentleness falling out your mouth —you dead know how it is, each hushmust be buried on the way backwith
John Savant
If we can manage this pilgrimage—a miracle of grace beyond our merit—we can count upon an army of celebrants, glasses raised on high, reciting poems more beautiful than any we can imagine.
Vatican Dispatch
Gerard O’Connell
The crackdown against Christianity has taken various forms.
INDISSOLUBLE. The sacrament of marriage depicted in St. Isabel Church in Sanibel, Fla.
Signs Of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
Pope Francis’ reformed rules for marriage annulment cases, making the process simpler, quicker and less expensive, respond to calls that bishops from around the world have been making since before the 1980 meeting of the Synod of Bishops on the family convoked by St. John Paul II. With the new
Columns
James T. Keane
But what can escape the outrage censors when everything is an outrage?
BLESSING BEASTS. Deacon Eric Bertrand and Deacon Tom Hunkele bless hogs in Iowa on April 10.
Jay Cormier
On Memorial Day weekend last year, 22 of us stood before our bishop and were ordained to the diaconate. We had spent four years—five if you include the year of discernment and application—preparing for this day. In that time we had studied Scripture, liturgy, moral theology and canon law
Pope Francis meets with bishops from South Africa at Vatican
Signs Of the Times
Anthony Egan, S.J.
That such ministries are sinister is obvious. They rely on mass, possibly hypnotic, suggestion, group hysteria and unscrupulous manipulation.
Michael Simmelink
"Although globally aware, these young people seem unclear on what the Gospel is beyond just ‘doing good.'"
Faith in Focus
Valerie Schultz
The thing I remember best about Louie is that he said he hadn’t had a peach in 30 years. Louie (not his real name) was a lifer; he was in his 50s and had been in prison for over three decades. On the day he told me this, as he was hanging out in the library where I work, a couple of landscape
Editorials
The Editors
The measure of a college graduate should be who she becomes as a person, not on how much she makes.
(Un)Conventional Wisdom
Robert David Sullivan
Shows that stayed away from anything controversial would be pointless in 2015.
Israel school protest
Signs Of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
As Israeli students began their second week of classes on Sept. 6, thousands of students and teachers from Christian schools converged in front of the Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s office to protest government budget cuts to their schools. • During his homily on Sept. 10, Pope Francis s
Letters
Our readers
No to VouchersIn “Our Segregated Schools” (Editorial, 8/31) the editors call for the expansion of voucher programs as a way to combat segregation. What that suggestion misses is that Catholic schools are overwhelmingly not unionized. As such, the pay for teachers is significantly lower i
Current Comment
The Editors
Unions struggling to organize workers will now be able to bargain with the parent company that is ultimately calling the shots.
Signs Of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
British parliamentarians on Sept. 11 soundly rejected a right-to-die bill that would have allowed people with less than six months to live to end their lives legally. Only 118 members of Parliament voted in favor of the bill; 330 voted against it. The bill had faced strong opposition from vario
ROAD WARRIORS. Robert Redford and Nick Nolte on the Appalachian Trail in “A Walk in the Woods.”
Film
John Anderson
Stories of recovery and rebuilding
Students tour San Gabriel Mission in early May in San Gabriel, Calif. The fourth-grade California history curriculum looks at the social, political, cultural and economic life of the mission period. (CNS photo/Nancy Wiechec)
Signs Of the Times
From AP, CNS, RNS, Staff and other sources
California Catholic leaders plan to revamp church curriculum and museum programs on the California mission system to present more accurately the history, the perspective of California Indians and the missions’ impact on Indian life. The initiative is part of a larger program of the California
SAFE AT LAST? Syrian refugee children covered with dust arrive on Sept. 10 at the Jordanian border with Syria and Iraq, near Amman, Jordan.
Signs Of the Times
Kevin Clarke
The Obama administration announced on Sept. 10 that it would seek to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees during the next fiscal year in response to a growing crisis that has shocked consciences around the world. That number would reflect a significant increase from the 1,293 admitted in fiscal year 2015, b
SPECIAL DELIVERY. Boxes containing palliums ready in St. Peter’s Basilica for delivery to new metropolitan archbishops on June 29.
Gerald P. Fogarty
The news that Pope Francis has changed the procedure for the reception and imposition of the pallium probably struck most Catholics as a relatively insignificant alteration in a ceremony restricted to very high members of the hierarchy, archbishops with metropolitan provinces—and therefore vir
Of Other Things
Bill McGarvey
Metrics and efficiency have become the lifeblood of our technocracy.