Vatican Diplomat Questions Relations With Israel With new problems over visas for foreign priests and the long, ongoing negotiations needed to resolve the tax status of Catholic institutions in Israel, the Vaticans former ambassador to that country said, To be frank, relations between the Catholic

When protesters in Belgrade converged on the patriarchal headquarters of the Serbian Orthodox Church last April, they were angry about proposed liturgical reforms. The reforms included an instruction to priests to recite aloud some previously silent prayers and to leave the holy doors in the icon sc

Our live in grandchild teamed up with my husband and pressured us into acquiring an adorable Cavalier King Charles spaniel puppy Yesterday a Cavalier was pictured in a N Y Times Business section story reporting that there are 44 8 million pet dogs in America Their owners help to support a 38 bi

Some readings at the end of the liturgical year and the beginning of Advent are from apocalyptic books such as Daniel and the little apocalypses in the Synoptic Gospels These passages refer to cosmic disturbances sun and mood falling out of the sky wars and terror-stricken people giving th

1 Coming of Jesus for the Final Judgment The first two weeks of the Advent liturgy focus heavily on the Last Judgment with its consequent rewards and punishments If a person centers himself on this aspect of Advent he deepens his awareness of his own death and the ultimate evaluation of what he

The full text of Pope Benedict XVI s new encyclical on hope Spe Salvi has just been released by the Vatican The link is below Like Benedict s first encyclical Deus Caritas Est it is primarily in the form of a meditation See what you think Spe Salvi

My students at Fordham University and I have been reading Mary Gordon s Final Payments as one of the texts in our class on American Catholic novels and the following scene from Gordon s first novel caught my eye To give a bit of context this scene depicts a daughter who cared for her recen

Eschatology the study of the end times tends to get people fired up To get a discussion going about eschatology simply ask the question What would you do today if you knew that the world would end tomorrow and people will talk Changing the word tomorrow to next week or next year and t

Has anyone slogged through Philip Pullman s The Golden Compass part of his bestselling trilogy known as His Dark Materials An excellent article in The Atlantic called How Hollywood Saved God shows how the book s frankly anti-Catholic plotline was successfully watered down for a new ho

If you haven t done so already be sure to check out editor in chief Drew Christiansen s discussion of The Stillborn God with sociologist Jose Casanova Mark Lilla s new books has received a number of approving reviews and was excerpted on the cover of the New York Times magazine But both

The reading from Isaiah nicely picked up by the response--Psalm 122--takes us to Zion the hill on which Jerusalem sat where the temple rested whence royal Davidic enterprises worked and most important of all where stood God s cosmic throne rooted deep in the earth and brushing the heavens

The First Sunday of Advent December 2 2007 marks the start of a new liturgical year when we will again use the readings from Cycle A of the Lectionary for Mass Most readers of America are certainly familiar with the basic structure of the three-year Sunday Lectionary in which the Gospel readin

In last week s second reading Paul held himself up as a model for imitation to the Thessalonians 2 Thess 3 7-12 For Paul imitation is neither the sincerest form of flattery nor a cheap copy but a means to model oneself in the life of Christ Paul holds himself up as a model of imitation st

This is my first ever entry on a blog and while I am happy to be doing so in such good company my happiness is not untethered from an ongoing ambivalence about the blogosphere in particular and the Internet in general As the recent book Cult of the Amateur Doubleday 2007 by Andrew Keen

Recently economists pointed to a small drop in the number of absolutely poor in 2006 census data Many dispute the finding 8217 s significance The U S government 8217 s calculation of poverty 20 000 or under a year for a family of four is considered by many policy analysts as a grossly inade

The sad decline of the Dream Act

The abortion debate is about who and what we are