Cape Cod MA It rsquo s December 30 All of us I am sure are pondering the year past and looking ahead with varying degrees of apprehension to 2014 For me there is the added feature ndash fact apprehension ndash that January 1 marks the half-way point of my sabbatical Technically at lea

For my birthday this year a friend gave me a nbsp collection of writings by Karl Rahner The collection is titled The Great Church Year The Best of Karl Rahner 39 s Homilies Sermons and Meditations As you 39 d expect every paragraph edifies Here I want to share nbsp a poetic nbsp passage th

Every year at Christmas upon my return home I always make an extra effort to visit my alma mater My primary reason is clear to visit friends that I made amongst the faculty and staff when I was a student there and with whom I still try to keep close ties But I do retain a secondary reason for m

Is it just me?  Am I the only one let down by the holiday?

In a recent op-ed in the New York Times columnist Bill Keller called for the Catholic Church to lifts its requirement for mandatory celibacy for priests This requirement wrote Keller ldquo has driven away many good priests rdquo and has bred ldquo a culture of sexual exceptionalism and denial

The second week of December was a rough one on the home front The Washington Post told us that beyond the massacre at Newtown 71 children had been killed by gunfire in 2012 In Colorado a high school student armed with a just-bought shotgun set out to get even with one of his teachers but shot t

The latest from Robert David Sullivan at "(Un)Conventional Wisdom"

Dear Readers As we mark the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord we here at America are especially mindful of the many gifts that the Lord has bestowed upon us this year We count you our readers and supporters first among them Thank you On behalf of the Board of Directors editors and staff

Oh loving God who out of love chose to save us to be with us to be born meek and lowly We celebrate your great gift of love by giving gifts to those we love As we give these gifts help us remember the people behind them the miners and harvesters who work in difficult and dangerous conditions th

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

Over the past week I 39 ve discussed a few essays one by Fr Raymond Schroth S J in America another by Samuel Goldman in First Things which have lamented the decline in the humanities Those essays were long commentaries on reports that echoed the same concerns Among a few differences in ou

In 2013 the use of the death penalty continued its steady decline by almost every measure, according to a report released in December by the Death Penalty Information Center. Executions in the United States dropped by about 10 percent from 2012, to 39 from 43, marking only the second time in the pas

Once again, Afghanistan has worn down its would-be conquerors. It is a time to leave.

The Bard’s many incarnations

As fighting continued in Juba, the capital city of South Sudan, and spread to other Sudanese cities, Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian leaders urged reconciliation and offered to serve as mediators in the conflict. Thousands have fled to the presumed safety of U.N. compounds after street fighting

And I say to my people’s masters, Beware/ Beware of the thing that is coming, beware of the risen people/ Who shall take what ye would not give.

Fighting in the Middle East creates openings for extremist and threatens tolerance of Christians.

The Dignity of the Vulnerable By Meghan J. Clarke‘The dignity of the human person and the common good rank higher than the comfort of those who refuse to renounce their privileges” (No. 218). In a simple sentence, Pope Francis summarizes the bedrock of Catholic social doctrine: human dignity