Before I said my first mass an old priest gave me two great pieces of advice You know when the congregation is filled with optimists After you have given a long series of announcements at the end of Mass and then you say and finally - people take out their car keys The second was Never

The Year of St Paul began on June 28 2008 and it seems right to make note of it before it recedes in the revelries of summer beginning with Fourth of July celebrations tomorrow Prior to St Paul s conversion he persecuted the Church and was trying to destroy it Gal 1 13 Paul recognized

Just a reminder that Jennifer Fulwiler author of A Sexual Revolution will be live-blogging about her article on Monday and Tuesday here at In All Things A former pro-choice atheist Jennifer is a Catholic convert and blogs at Et Tu Jennifer will be blogging about her conversion and resp

The Lord be with you And also with you Not and with your spirit The rendering of Et cum spiritu tuo in a sense which included the whole person raised eyebrows back then when it first came out Had a fifth column of Anglo-Saxon anti-metaphysician logical positivists infiltra

Are you planning a July 4th BBQ A real BBQ or a fake one Until I worked in Little Rock Arkansas I thought a BBQ was about burgers and hot dogs when in fact that is grilling not BBQ BBQ is about tough cuts of meat ribs or brisket being slow-cooked for ten hours or more then served wit

The government of New South Wales Australia has passed a special amendment regarding public conduct during the upcoming World Youth Day in Sydney As the Sydney Morning Herald reports Extraordinary new powers will allow police to arrest and fine people for causing annoyance to World You

Cambridge MA June 27-30 I was in Orlando Florida for the Seventh International Conference of the World Association of Vedic Studies WAVES This is a meeting of Hindus who meet every second year for a conference that is in part a cultural event in part a confidence-building gathering and in

Sen John McCain has seen his support among Latino voters tank and he needs to do something about it For years the GOP s share of this demographic has been growing and in 2004 George W Bush garnered 44 percent of the Latino vote But recent polls have Obama taking 60 percent of Latinos to McCa

Austen Ivereigh has done a great service by getting beneath the tabloid headlines about gay bishops and same-sex marriage to point out that the underlying difference in the Anglican Communion as found in the recent meeting of dissidents in Jerusalem has to do with the literal interpretation of scr

The Pauline Year a celebration of the life of Saint Paul believed to have been born 2 000 years ago began on the Feast of Sts Peter and Paul June 29 Here is Pope Benedict s reflection on Paul for that feast day in which he reminds us that the question for Christians to ask is not si

The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has responded to the new traditionalist Anglican network set up by bishops meeting last week in Jerusalem at the so-called Global Anglican Future conference or GAFCON He urges the GAFCON bishops to stop and think about what they are doing A

Barack Obama s campaign was trying hard to address to challenges to his candidacy this week Amidst charges that he is less than patriotic Obama gave a major speech in Independence Missouri yesterday And to shore up his credentials on foreign policy the campaign announced that Obama will be m

Two additions to our Web site this week may be of interest to readers of The Good Word First the editorial in our July 7-14 issue looks at the upcoming synod on the Bible and the working document or instrumentem laboris for the conference that was released earlier this month The editors write

So there we have it a new Bible-based evangelical network of Anglican Churches mostly in the developing South has been formed at a conference of 280 bishops in Jerusalem as a counter-weight within the Anglican Communion This is not a split or schism But it can be likened to a Reformation w

A front page story in this morning s Washington Post highlights the effects of persistent false rumors about Barack Obama The rumors are spread on the Internet and by word-of-mouth this last still being the most effective means of communication devised by humankind Indeed the story s protago

The British press has been reaching for sacred metaphors to describe Nelson Mandela whose 90th birthday was celebrated with a celebrity-festooned Hyde Park concert in London last Friday night The icon of freedom has acquired Christ-like status in our time On stage he was a beatific presenc

David Shields an author and English professor at the University of Washington has written a sort of memoir combined with a science report called The Thing About Life Is That One Day You ll Be Dead My daughters were a little alarmed to see me engrossed in such a morbidly-titled book I think t

This coming week I make the transition to another Jesuit university I taught at Boston College from 2001-2004 then moved to Santa Clara University where I have taught for the last four years Now I am honored to be taking a position in the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education at Fo

Above Tim Russert pictured with Catholic school children CNS photo In one of the strangest religious stories of the month Sally Quinn the longtime Washington Post reporter and co-editor of the Post-Newsweek blog On Faith wrote about her decision to receive Communion at her close friend Tim

Congrats to America blogger Michael Sean Winters on the release of his new book Left at the Altar How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can Save the Democrats George Stephanopoulos hosted a book part for Michael last night at his Georgetown home and the Washington Post was th