High food prices may lead to further political unrest in 2011.

Cambridge MA I at least was enthralled for the last six weeks by my series on Swami Prabhavananda on the Sermon on the Mount and so have not commented on other issues For the sake of catch-up I did want to make one comment now mdash on the extract from Pope Benedict rsquo s Holy Week from th

I love the Bible for more reasons than I could possibly write in one blog post but I will stick with one reason here I love its oddly-angled continuities I could be describing my old house literally but I am describing the ways in which the coherence of the Bible takes its shape by winding and

What does unconditional love and acceptance look like in twenty-first century America today Sometimes she wears a dress made of raw meat To her millions of fans and admirers Lady Gaga the 24-year-old pop superstar represents acceptance and affirmation when their peers the media and society a

A friend recently told me that he was participating in a new inter-religious initiative at a Catholic university in Europe I didn rsquo t envy his assignment Though vitally important in a world that is too often visited by the violent acts of self-avowed religious believers such dialogues can be

Jesuits in Malta are calling for an international response to protect civilians in Libya and to assist in the evacuation of sub-Saharan nationals whose governments have been unable or unwilling to remove their citizens from dangerous conditions amid the chaos in Libya Responding to the use of deadl

From Mirada Global an examination of the perennial floods in the mountains of Rio de Janeiro mdash and why nothing has been done to prevent them The whole of Brazil and even the rest of the world have witnesses the situation that the State of Rio de Janeiro faces due to the rains and the floods

At Poynter org Martin Baron editor of the Boston Globe talks about the journalistic process behind breaking the story of sexual abuse by priests He says he lit the match starting the investigation on his first day on the job nearly ten years ago Baron was determined to avoid ldquo he said s

The Christian member of the Pakistan government killed by Islamic fanatics on Wednesday gave an interview last year which shows he had received threats and knew he was likely to die Shahbaz Bhatti who was Minister of Minorities opposed Pakistan s notorious blasphemy law condemned by Pope Benedic

Cambridge MA Lent is upon us our Sunday readings from the Sermon on the Mount come to an end on March 6 and so we must take leave of our series on Swami Prabhavananda rsquo s Sermon on the Mount according to Vedanta Three passages from his commentary on Chapter 7 of Matthew of which we hear on

Archbishop Silvano M Tomasi the nbsp Permanent Representative of the Holy See to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva issued a statement on the requirement of religious freedom that is especially pertinent in light of the assassination March 1 of Pakistani Minorities

Last year on the day after Thanksgiving I finally had the chance to visit after years of wanting to the Shrine of St Katharine Drexel the great Philadelphia heiress-turned-foundress nbsp The shrine in Bensalem Pa located a few miles from my family s home is also the home of the mother ho

With the Oscars still in mind in the Always the last to know category I received a phone call from the local Fox Network affiliate to talk to me about the revised edition of the New American Bible except they knew more about it than I Their slogan ldquo Wake up with Fox 9 rdquo now takes on

Following up on Austen Ivereigh s illuminating post below another question What is the nbsp importance of Pope Benedict XVI rsquo s sweeping statements in the latest installment of his book series Jesus of Nazareth about the need not to hold the Jewish people responsible as a whole for the death o

It would have been surprising if Pope Benedict had resurrected the age-old antisemitic accusation that the Jews as a people were responsible for Jesus death But in part two of Jesus of Nazareth out next week he provides some interesting further scriptural and theological justification for debunk

Those remembering Father George Hunt wrote movingly of his literary interests and former Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent s story of Father Hunt scouring used bookstores for that hidden book gem brought a smile to my face and I m sure to many other readers as well I m certain that a shared charac