One reader asked for the text of the letter from Senator Kennedy to Pope Benedict XVI hand-delivered by President Obama to the pope on his recent visit to Vatican City portions of which were read yesterday by Cardinal McCarrick at the graveside service nbsp The full text is below along with the

Cambridge MA So here is the fourth of my entries on my trip to India this time regarding interreligious dialogue At the end of this entry I will respond to three of the comments you rsquo ve kindly posted in past weeks A good part of my trip was involved in what we can call interreligious di

The basis of the conflict here between Jesus and his critics Pharisees and those who professionally know the Law is the set of laws known as the laws of cleanliness nbsp Many of these laws came into being because of concerns for health dirtiness could be a cause of harm for many in one s fami

According to Michael Paulson at the Boston Globe in an article earlier today Cardinal Sean O Malley who gave the final commendation at the funeral of Senator Kennedy was under intense pressure not to afford the senator whose deep faith and life of prayer have become more public in the past few d

Reading Tony Blair s speech to the Communion and Liberation meeting in Rimini in which he comments approvingly on Caritas in Veritate and talks of Faith in much the same way that Encyclical does I can t help rubbing my eyes thinking Imagine him saying this when he was Prime Minister Maybe you

NCR is reporting that Bishop Joseph F Martino of Scranton Pa has resigned abruptly nbsp nbsp In All Things readers will recall that Bishop Martino during a parish meeting last fall nbsp centering the USCCB s document Faithful Citizenship in the midst of the presidential election declar

Jon Sobrino the Spanish Jesuit theologian based in El Salvador says the delay in the process of beatification of Oscar Romero is essentially political namely fear of its impact on the Vatican s relations with the Central-American state The martyred Archbishop of San Salvador gunned down at the

Leonard Peltier the Native American activist who is serving consecutive life terms for allegedly killing two FBI agents faced a parole hearing on July 28 20009 the first full hearing in 15 years nbsp In mid- August however the parole commission denied his request for parole nbsp Peltier n

The public option is ldquo an option rdquo No one would be forced into it Rather it would be offered along with other choices in what has been called ldquo a health insurance exchange rdquo The benefit of an exchange is that it would allow consumers to compare plans and then to choose for th

Watching the funeral cortege of Sen Edward M Kennedy wind its way up Route 6 then Route 3 and finally through the streets of Boston I could not help thinking that eloquence of the common man when it manifests itself far outstrips any words we writers have to offer Along the highway still an

nbsp Our own Matt Malone SJ who will soon and sadly for us be departing the magazine for theology studies in preparation for ordination appears on NET the Brooklyn diocese s new web channel speaking about Sen Kennedy nbsp Matt is humble about his political acumen and background he worked

A few years ago a reading group to which I belong took on the task of reading The City of God by St Augustine Every Friday we would meet to discuss the twenty pages we had set for ourselves that week the next week we would move on to the next twenty pages By the time the academic year was windi

A 50-year-old woman suffering from a form of motor neurone disease who has been wheelchair-bound since 2005 now walks again after bathing in Lourdes -- and her doctor is stunned The Italian press is carrying the story -- eg Corriere here -- and there s Spanish coverage here As usual such stories

nbsp We ve gotten thousands of hits and a boatload of letters on this week s two nbsp cover stories by Bishop John D Arcy and John Quinn on the Notre Dame affair nbsp Some you can already read at the close of each of the articles others we will publish in later editions of the magazine nbsp F

ldquo hellip the difficult yet noble art of politics rdquo nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp This phrase from Vatican II Gaudium et Spes No 75 nbsp comes to mind as we remember Senator Ted Kennedy nbsp nbsp The Council encourages those with ta

The five obstacles to health care reform named in the America editorial of Aug 31-Sept 7 is hardly an exhaustive list Other obstacles keep getting in the way I rsquo ve identified five more below 1 Distrust of government Andrew Kohut president of the PEW Research Center asked rhetorically w

Senator Edward M Kennedy was far from the perfect man nbsp In fact his infamous actions at Chappaquiddick Island in 1969 which led to the death of the young Mary Jo Kopechne he called at the time ldquo indefensible rdquo I agree Less remarked-upon nbsp over the last few days nbsp has been

We may still be on a biweekly schedule but we continue to update the Web site every week with new material Father Jim Martin has been keeping our blog readers up to speed on our many online culture offerings And yesterday we posted two new articles on our home page The first deals with the neura

Dan Gilgoff over at US News interviews Adam Clymer Senator Kennedy s biographer on the man s faith Some obituaries today are calling Ted Kennedy a devout Catholic How important was his faith to him personally It meant a great deal to him A friend of his told me how painful it was for him not to t

My father is a very calm imperturbable man We speak just about every morning and his voice only rises when reporting that the Red Sox lost to the Yankees He rarely calls in the evening but he did so last night He had gone to Mass at St Joseph rsquo s Living Center in Windham Connecticut the