The President gave a forceful speech in Pittsburgh yesterday calling for Congress to move forward on climate change legislation and linking the need for that legislation with the nightmare unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico That link is obvious and the President was brave to bring it up because pol

Chris Nelhig waits He stands in the midst of a group of fellow fishermen a few taking drags on cigarettes All are out of work Women and children in shorts and t-shirts sit beneath a tent which offers shade while others line up in folding chairs or sit on rails of a wooden ramp leading up to a t

Walking through the city of New Orleans it is all anyone can hear Whether tourist or native everyone speaks of the oily creep washing ashore across the Gulf the unnatural disaster unfolding across a city that has barely begun to emerge from the devastation of Katrina and a similar alarming hori

In preparing a homily for the Feast of Corpus Christi this Sunday I reread two of my favorite passages about belief in the Eucharist which I thought I rsquo d share nbsp with any priests or deacons looking for some inspiration for a homily and nbsp with any Catholic eager to reflect on this grea

ldquo Annulments are just for the rich rdquo nbsp ldquo The Church makes a great deal of money from annulments rdquo nbsp ldquo Just more hypocrisy from the Catholic Church--it teaches against divorce but figures out another way to give a divorce rdquo ldquo Total sham how can the Churc

Archbishop Thomas Wenski was installed yesterday as the new Archbishop of Miami He is known largely for two things the fact that he drives a motorcycle and the fact that he is fluent in Spanish and Haitain Creole having worked with those communities all of his life At the Mass in which he took p

Chicago Once again the opportunity to blog for America puts me in the position of commenting on topics beyond my expertise but I cannot let pass without mention the 700th anniversary of the death of Marguerite Porete the medieval Christian mystic who was condemned for heresy and burnt at the stak

I am still a novice blogger Yes I have done a few over the past couple of years but word has now come down that America rsquo s associate editors are to blog on a regular basis Some already blog prolifically and in my mind rsquo s eye I see their fingers flying over their computer keyboards as

Greg Boyle S J founder of Homeboy Industries and author of Tattoos on the Heart which we reviewed here nbsp in our piece Hope for Homies was interviewed on May 20 on NPR s Fresh Air with Terry Gross Back in April he was also a guest on the America podcast As John Coleman S J repor

As the international reaction to Monday s debacle on board the Mavi Marmara nbsp continues Egypt has opened the Rafa crossing to humanitarian relief goods for an unlimited time Naturally there has been a storm of coverage in Israel of the Israeli naval commandos version of riot control A fail

Rand Paul is the gift that keeps on giving The would-be non-politician politician has established himself as a principled man willing to take bold stands to tell the truth a modern day Mr Smith dressed up in libertarian garb He and his Tea Party crowd aim to throw out the bums who have betraye

An apostolic visitation of the Church in Ireland will begin in the autumn the Vatican announced yesterday Two cardinals and three archbishops from the UK the US and Canada will offer assistance to the Bishops clergy religious and lay faithful as they seek to respond adequately to the situatio

Sad to say the abuse of youths by priests and bishops is not entirely new in the Catholic Church As we will see it was also found in the 11th century nbsp Some are asking how the can church show repentance for these terrible actions What kind of penance might an individual who has been guilty o

Today rsquo s front-page story in The New York Times Prospective Catholic Priests Face Sexuality Hurdles by Paul Vitello about the exclusion and weeding out of gay men from seminaries and religious formation houses made for depressing reading nbsp Why depressing nbsp Several reasons First

nbsp The Rev John Meier professor of New Testament at Notre Dame nbsp is one of my heroes nbsp Over the past few years I ve read each of the volumes of his indispensable A Marginal Jew nbsp a multivolume work still rolling out nbsp on the historical Jesus nbsp If you want to kn

By now most of our readers have heard of this book and author a Jesuit priest and founder of Homeboy Industries mdash the largest gang intervention program in the country It rsquo s tough it rsquo s wrenching but it is also deeply inspiring and leaves the reader with a measured hope that these

In the church's new birth this Pentecost, a birth by fire, some things must die.