From the Associated Press DUBLIN AP -- A Roman Catholic diocese at the center of Ireland s child-abuse scandals appealed Tuesday to its parishioners to cover some of its more than euro 10 million 14 million in bills to victims and lawyers Bishop Denis Brennan of Ferns the southeast Irish di

Boy I wish I could embed this onto our page nbsp This is a terrific short video from Georgetown University interviewing four masters of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius John W O Malley S J George Aschenbrenner S J John Padberg S J and William A Barry S J nbsp Be sure to ch

I am in the midst of teaching a seminar that considers among other things the perceived and often undeniable violence involved in Christian interpretation of the Hebrew Bible And I recently attended the feast of Purim at a conservative synagogue mdash quite a different experience from hearing a

The Archdiocese of Washington DC is no longer offering benefits to spouses of new employees because of the change in DC law allowing same-sex marriages nbsp Here s the Washington Post Employees at Catholic Charities were told Monday that the social services organization is changing its health

Canadians are so nice I positively detest having to cite them as the most recent example of the bizarre phenomena by which the Olympic Games celebrate their opening and closing Ceremony and ritual are the kind of things to which a Catholic imagination is naturally drawn I suppose Was anyone else

This week online Father Jim Martin talks about his new book A Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything which is available for sale next Tuesday March 9 Listen to our conversation Plus our weekly In These Pages feature highlights an archive article from 1988 detailing the troubling trend toward p

I can t say I always look forward to participating in the sacrament of Reconciliation Still I go Not as often as I should perhaps But I try There have been times when I ve felt that the priest barely listened to me or he reacted too harshly to what I had to say A reminder I suppose that whi

There are numerous positives to blogging on the scripture people actually read what you have written the time between writing and publishing is not measured in months and years but in minutes and you can write in a less formal style than is required by academia allowing you often to bridge hear

To change indicates that one is alive. This applies to people, institutions and even language. It is a natural development even when it meets resistance, because we can become comfortable in old and familiar ways. The challenge of change is before Catholics now as the church in the United States and

Politicians need to hear from the American people that they are willing to make sacrifices for the future of the nation.

Shakespeare, Edmund Campion and the grace of forgiveness

The spiritual exercises of a hospital chaplain

Gail Godwin writes with the shrewdness and wit of Muriel Spark and a tender, fetching, Southern voice.

These days I look to children to remind me about enthusiasm.

Prison policy needs to allow for the possibility of redemption.

As I grieved over the recent earthquake victims in Haiti, many friends who know of my close personal ties to that country sought to console me. Those ties began in 2001, when as an idealistic graduate student of sociology I undertook a dissertation project that compared how the Catholic Church assis