Philip Jenkins' new book challenges common wisdom about how lofty Christian doctrine was formulated amid human chaos.

News in the UK has been dominated this weekend by the religious equivalent of a diplomatic row In comments to be broadcast tomorrow on a BBC radio programme the Archbishop of Canterbury said the Church in Ireland had lost all credibility over its handling of sex abuse nbsp The comment provoked

While they were talking and discussing Jesus himself came near and went with them but their eyes were kept from recognizing him And he said to them What are you discussing with each other while you walk along They stood still looking sad Then one of them whose name was Cleopas answered h

Cambridge MA I am sure that by now regular readers of In All Things have figured out that I am not particularly well-connected in ecclesial circles and certainly have no inside scoop on the Vatican But I can use the internet and read And so when I was disheartened by the latest uproar at the V

This year the religious symbolism of Easter could not be more resonant for the Catholic Church Each day from Good Friday to Easter Sunday offers the Church a profound spiritual message as it confronts the horrific effects of the crimes of clerical sexual abuse which have convulsed the church fir

Yesterday we attended a Good Friday justice walk modeled on the Stations of the Cross nbsp Living in a new town I had hoped that it would provide an entry into the suffering struggles and salvation of this place nbsp It was sponsored by a broad coalition of local churches and justice groups

Good Friday is too solemn a day for blogging especially about something as ephemeral as politics But today with the Church besieged by scandal I hope that pastors who are called upon to preach will preach about the scandal of the Cross We have lost that sense of the Cross When we see a cross a

Yes you read that right nbsp America has nbsp published--posted--its first article ever in Spanish nbsp Yes a bit late given the predominance of Spanish-speaking Catholics in this country but better late than jam aacute s nbsp The story A few months ago I was invited to speak at this year

According to a 2004 study of the lifetime distribution of health care costs the per-capita lifetime expenditure for women is one-third higher than for men 361 200 and 268 700 respectively And that s for those with insurance The study used data from 3 75 million Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mich

In this week s issue the editors weigh in on the U S bishops conerns about and reactions to the recently passed health care reform bill The great stumbling block to endorsing the bill was the fear that under the terms of the core Senate bill financing might seep out through community health

Two new pieces on the burgeoning sexual abuse crisis are now up on our Web site First a Web-only analysis from Thomas J Reese S J of the Woodstock Theological Center and former editor of America of course on what the European bishops can learn from the U S sexual abuse crisis The biggest m

Yesterday in a post on the response to the New York Times story about the Milwaukee situation I referred to the reply of Father Brundage a central figure in the case nbsp and repeated his claim that he had been misquoted by the Times The Times has now pointed out that he was not quoted at all i

More so than in 2002 when the clerical sex abuse crisis exploded into American newspapers church leaders and prominent Catholics have accused the media of unjustly targeting the church specifically the pope nbsp The reporting on the issue is they say inaccurate unfair and motivated by anti-C

I don t even know what this is called nbsp Techies weigh in here nbsp It s sort of an online high-res movable 360-degree clickable image of the Sistine Chapel nbsp Check it out nbsp Wait for it to load and then drag your mouse to where you want to go and zoom in nbsp Sometimes I feel

Rob Weinert-Kendt one of our theater critics and who writes the zippy blog The Wicked Stage looks at three dramas that had limited runs this season-- Time Stands Still A View from nbsp the Bridge and The Miracle Worker --and wonders whether the presence of so many movie stars Liev Schreiber

Offshore drilling is like pregnancy ndash there is no halfway So it is more than a little surprising that President Barack Obama who campaigned against off-shore drilling along the Eastern seaboard has now decided to embrace it as part of his effort to pass a climate change bill The Post rsqu

Cardinal William Levada the prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith has responded to articles criticizing Pope Benedict XVI Ithen Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger for his handling of the case of an abusive priest in Milwaukee particularly as detailed in The New York Times last week in

In 1998 I started to run sexual abuse survivor groups at Klinic Community Health Centre in Winnipeg for men who had been abused as children I ran these groups until 2001 when I returned to the academic world on a full-time basis When I started these groups many people told me that they would not