Every morning I go to the Vatican website to consult the daily Bollettino where they post important announcements such as the Rinunce e Nominee and Le Udienze This morning rsquo s had this notice under the latter category Il Santo Padre riceve questo pomeriggio in Udienza nbsp S E il Signo

Yes you read that headline correctly nbsp Mother Mary McKillop the foundress of the Australian-based Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart nbsp was in 1871 officially excommunicated by her local bishop on the grounds that she she had incited the sisters to disobedience and defiance

What with the papal encyclical Caritas in Veritate released at the beginning of the week and the Pope receiving President Obama at week rsquo s end there is much to write about regarding both events But I do not want to overlook another important event in the life of the Church in America and ind

I understood it tonight -- not the papal encyclical I ll come to that but the business of putting people on the fourth plinth in London s Trafalgar Square real people standing or sitting or knitting or whatever for an hour at a time 24 hours a day over the next couple of months It s call

nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp Hard on the heels of the article in The New York Times nbsp about the Apostolic Visitation of women s religious orders in the nbsp United States nbsp and the nbsp Leadership Conference of Women Religious nbsp is today s NPR s

Many scholars evaluate Ephesians as a pseudonymous letter of Paul s attributing it to a period some twenty years approximately after Paul s martyrdom and composed by disciples of Paul sometimes styled as a Pauline school Others note that the earliest manuscript traditions lack to the Ephesi

The hubris of George Weigel knows no bounds In a breathtaking essay at National Review Online Weigel concludes that Pope Benedict rsquo s encyclical Caritas in Veritate resembles a duck-billed platypus because it is in his view a bad combination of the Pope rsquo s true thought with those pas

The most intriguing and exciting part of the new encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI for me nbsp is the brief section of Chapter 3 where he reflects on the ldquo astonishing experience of gift rdquo nbsp As I read this I went back to a sermon of Professor Paul Ricoeur at the University of Chicago

Who wrote Caritas in veritate The Pope of course and in so far as it bears Benedict XVI rsquo s signature the whole carries his authority But it is obvious that some passages are more Benedictine than others The often sharp shift in style and language is one of the least impressive characteris

Building on last week rsquo s readings about prophets in a way unusual and interesting we now get additional insight from Amos and Mark nbsp The Amos narrative looms oddly in a book where otherwise the prophet is a speaker rather than spoken about and it comes too abruptly since the lectionary s

Many centuries ago the Pope decided that all the Jews had to leave Rome Naturally there was an uproar from the Jewish community nbsp So the Pope made a deal nbsp He would have a religious debate with a member of the Jewish community nbsp If the Jews won they could stay nbsp If the Pope won

The editor in chief of America Drew Christiansen S J has forgotten more about Catholic social teaching than I rsquo ve ever known mdash and he rsquo s not forgotten much nbsp So I urge you to read his commentary nbsp below nbsp on the pope rsquo s new encyclical on social justice and the econ

The English-language text of Pope Benedict s new encyclical is available on the Vatican website here Jim Keane S J nbsp nbsp nbsp

For four years now many Catholics have been waiting for a new social encyclical When would the pope treat globalization Do a thorough treatment of environmental ethics Comment on the global economic crisis Come to the defense of labor Speculation peaked two years on the 40th anniversary of Pop

Pope Benedict XVI rsquo s new encyclical quot Caritas in Veritate quot is likely to be this Pontiff rsquo s most significant contribution to the Church rsquo s social doctrine It is telling that he chose to organize his thoughts around the anniversary of Paul VI rsquo s quot Populorum Progressio

On Friday night my wife and I went to see the new and enthusiastically reviewed quot Hair quot on Broadway Though I was born in 1969 and had regular exposure to quot Jesus Christ Superstar quot and quot Godspell quot in the 1970s I had never heard nor seen all of quot Hair quot My wif

ldquo Tell me what you eat rdquo the French gastronomist Anthelme Brillat-Savarin famously quipped ldquo and I will tell you what you are rdquo By that standard Americans might be said to be as corny as Kansas Corn represents the central staple of American agribusiness American cattle fatt

I hate to say quot I told you so quot but I did And the truth be told in this instance I do not hate telling you that I was prescient when I predicted the upcoming visit of President Obama to Pope Benedict would occasion gnashing of teeth within the conservative blogosphere What has been esp

'The Shack' has become both a fascination and an object of contempt to millions of Christians.