During the public sessions, on Nov. 12–13, of the annual Fall General Assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore, among other actions, the bishops: • Approved their first document on preaching in 30 years, “Preaching the Mystery of Faith: The Sunday Homily,&rdq

A modest proposal for controlling health care costs

Certain dates in history have a powerful hold on the American imagination When we think about World War II we remember Dec 7 1941 mdash a date President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed would forever live ldquo in infamy rdquo Our minds also turn to D-Day June 6 1944 when Allied forces led by

You never know what you’re going to get during the dinner table family roundup of the day’s events. Our kindergartner recently told us: “The king and queen of England used to be really mean. They made everybody go to one church. They wouldn’t let people go to other churches.

According to the Syrian novelist Dima Wannous, the seed of Syria’s Arab Spring revolt was planted in Damascus in February 2011. A policeman insulted a shop owner, and a crowd of young workers and traders formed chanting, “The Syrian people cannot be humiliated.” The interior minist

Growing up Protestant and Republican in Kansas, I began life as a political conservative. But when I was in college, John F. Kennedy changed that. He and Pope John XXIII opened the door to the Catholic Church for me, and for most of my adult life I considered myself a Catholic political liberal. I a

When we pray for peace, we pray for peace for everyone,” said the Rev. Yoel Salvaterra, who serves the Catholic community in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, after a morning in which more than 20 rockets fired from the Gaza Strip landed in the city. “Our prayers have no borders. W

Around 62 percent of adult U.S. Catholics have a profile on Facebook; 58 percent of Catholics 30 and under share pictures, articles and comments at least once a week; and nearly a third say they would like their pastors and bishops to use blogs. Those are some results of a study released by the Cent

In Port-au-Prince at St Pierre parish one of the few Catholic churches that didn rsquo t collapse in the January 2010 earthquake which devastated this city of 3 7 million people everyone is dressed as smartly as they can at Sunday Mass in the evening the way people in New York did when I was a k

Cambridge MA This is the second of my Advent reflections occasioned by the Sunday readings reflection on the state of my soul and our souls and other things as well See the first here I just finished ndash on CD while driving home from my parish - Jennifer duBois rsquo fine first novel

From the America archives a look at the religious works of Dave Brubeck the jazz legend who died earlier this week Dave Brubeck is recognized as a gifted jazz pianist and composer His use of innovative techniques like the unique time signatures showcased in the breakthrough album Time Out

Last month on a cold November night in Times Square Police Officer Lawrence DePrimo who had been assigned there as part of a counter terrorism unit noticed an old man He was clearly homeless and even more obviously barefoot Officer DePrimo asked the man his shoe size He then went into a nearb

Flannery O rsquo Connor would have proudly owned the noun and the two adjectives most commonly associated with her name It rsquo s hard to imagine an ldquo author rdquo who could have been more ldquo Southern rdquo or more ldquo Catholic rdquo even though she lived at a time when those two a

In July Fr William Rowe 73 pastor of the St Mary Parish in southeast Illinois received an email from his bishop Edward Braxton telling him he had been removed as pastor and taking away his faculties to say Mass and offer the sacraments Most likely Rowe had seen it coming Braxton had complain

Pope Benedict XVI joined Twitter today choosing the handle Pontifex and amassing hundreds of thousands of followers in just a nbsp few hours all without composing a single tweet the inaugural tweet will be published next Wednesday The New York Times reports Benedict rsquo s posts will go ou

Cambridge MA I am sure that every reader has by now seen the picture accompanying this blog of the New York policeman kneeling down to give a homeless man poor and cold and barefoot on a winter rsquo s night a warm pair of shoes that he had bought with his own money The story was told with sim

The instructor a Presbyterian called my choice to preach about Mary ldquo bold rdquo We were asked to choose a piece of scripture and then deliver a ten-minute sermon Because it was the start of Advent I chose the annunciation from Luke rsquo s gospel To me Mary rsquo s calm and passive ac

I had occasion earlier this month to spend a day with over a hundred representatives of Catholic health systems I had been invited to give a talk to the Illinois Catholic Health Association on the topic of religious liberty What I came away with from that meeting however was a heightened sense o