The annual March for Life has come and gone One of its more bizarre qualities is the way GOP presidents participate by recorded message or telephone hook-up but never in person This began during Ronald Reagan s presidency when some advisors did not want a photo beamed around the world of Reaga

Though the compilers of the lectionary probably did not have the Presidential primary season in mind when selecting this week s passage from 1 Corinthians it is difficult for me as a resident of South Carolina to read these words from Paul without thinking of electoral politics With the Republ

A brief excerpt and then a link to the full text of Father Adolfo Nicolas s Homily at the Mass of Thanksgiving on Sunday the day after his election as Jesuit Superior General He began by noting that it was not a message for the whole world but instead a simple homily And then this exc

How long should a good homily be That question is often discussed A related question--but one that is not often addressed--is how long goes a homily have to be In other words how short is too short I got to thinking about this question this weekend while visiting a parish in Massachusetts The

This Sunday s first reading is woven explicitly into the Gospel a writer s move recently named intertextuality The practice is ancient though often the intertexts are less clear and more difficult to spot Today we have Isaiah 9 1-2 invited by Matthew into the Gospel at the place now ca

The Republican presidential race turns to Florida s winner-take-all primary one week from today For at least one presidential candidate Florida will be the end of the road the setting of the sun on his presidential ambitions The most likely loser will be Rudy Giuliani He has been out of the

Barack Obama has a problem He has based his campaign on moving past the stale arguments of the past 20 years when the Bush Clinton families have taken turns in the White House America s late Roman empire problem But last week the campaign harkened back to an even earlier time the iden

The rock 'n roll theology of The Hold Steady

Violence in Kenya & Pakistan, the Olympics comes to Beijing

With good reason, guardians of republican virtue are sounding alarms over the prospect of another Clinton presidency. Should Hillary Clinton return to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 2009, this time as the principal tenant, and should she receive an extension on that lease, the Clinton and Bush families

Mary Gordon's 'Circling My Mother,' reviewed

Pope attacks the cruelty of Atheism" and Pope Replies to The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins were two of the headlines that greeted Benedict XVIs second encyclical, Saved by Hope (Spe Salvi). An Anglican bishop was more on target when he told me: I welcome this encyclical on Christian hope. Hope is

Faithful Citizens “A Future Without Parish Schools,” by Terry Golway, (12/10) raises a crucially important issue for the future of catechesis in the Catholic Church in the United States. Catholic parish schools have been an extremely important factor in providing for the catechesis of Ca

The political news from Iowa and New Hampshire has undercut the conventional wisdom about our present political culture. The surprisingly decisive victory in Iowa of Barack Obama, an African-American candidate campaigning in a predominantly white state, damaged the image of Hillary Clinton as the in

At the height of the sexual abuse crisis in Boston Cardinal Bernard Law claimed that canon law had prevented him from taking action to protect victims Victims responded Canon law was irrelevant to us Children were being abused Sexual predators were being protected The Boston Globe July 7 200

If I’m ever in a situation where I’m permanently unconscious and unable to eat,” says my father, “I’m begging you: Let me go. I don’t want to be kept alive by a feeding tube.” We are sitting at my parents’ table on a pleasant Sunday morning, with advan

Last November, leaders in Bostons labor-management community gathered for the annual Cushing-Gavin Awards dinner. The neutral award went to Edward Boyle, S.J., a priest who for the past 37 years served as executive secretary of the archdioceses 1,200-member Labor Guild. Boyle died of cancer on Nov.

Here I am at the parting of the ways and I must take the other road after all. The death sentence has been passed and the atmosphere is so charged with enmity and hatred that no appeal has any hope of succeeding. So the whole proceedings turned into a sort of comedy developing a theme. It was not ju