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In his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI remarked that the essential functions of the church are three, for which he gives the Greek terms: leitourgia (worship), marturia/kerygma (witness/proclamation), and diakonia (service). He uses the word marturia (witness) in the original s
Editorials
Welfare rolls have dropped more than 50 percent over the past decade. Former President Bill Clinton, who spearheaded welfare reform through the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, promised to end welfare as we know it. Now he, along with Secretary of Health, Educati
I come before you as a pastor who cares deeply about your work as Catholic legislators. We do not always agree. I have tried to be a clear teacher and a decent pastor here in our nation’s capital. I offer some brief reflections that may nourish and challenge you in your vital responsibilities.
Faith
“When life comes forth or life is taken at some point, it’s more than earth, it’s more than buildings, it’s more than weather. It involves transformation. I see it as something to be memorialized."
Arts & CultureBooks
This year Americans are hearing more and more about the environment and about climate change Al Gore rsquo s An Inconvenient Truth has brought to moviegoers the lecture he has given across the country A Newsweek cover asks Why Saving the Environment Is Suddenly Hot 7 17 a Nation cover proclaim
Faith in Focus
I am troubled by what I see as a lack of unity in our church and wonder whether it results from a failure to appreciate precisely what kind of unity we Catholics should anticipate finding. Should we all hold and say the same thing, whether we are discussing a theological, philosophical, cultural or
Of Many Things
During the last three years of her life, my grandmother spent much of her time in one small room of the house she had lived in since moving to the suburbs to be closer to her children and grandchildren. The room was about 6 feet by 6 feet, close quarters crammed with a couch, a television set and tw
News
Vatican Observatory Head Says He Was Not FiredGeorge Coyne, S.J., who headed the Vatican Observatory for more than 28 years, said suggestions that he was forced out of the post by Pope Benedict XVI are simply not true. The Vatican announced on Aug. 19 that Father Coyne, 73, would be stepping down as
When reports began to surface within the Boy Scouts of America that a male nurse was touching scouts inappropriately during overnight camping trips, the executive leadership, not pleased, replaced the nurse. Later, however, his replacement was removed after similar allegations. Confused and deeply d
Arts & CulturePoetry
Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but
Arts & CultureBooks
If Franz Kafka were to rewrite the British television comedy ldquo Yes Prime Minister rdquo the result might resemble Jos Saramago rsquo s new novel Seeing The Nobel Prize-winning novelist weaves wry sardonic humor into his dark parable of an unnamed nation locked down by fear of terrorism
Letters
Voice in Wind
Thank you extremely for publishing such a well thought out editorial, with which I thoroughly agree (Sowing the Wind (8/14). I felt that you were expressing my very thoughts over the last few weeks. It makes me prouder to be a Jesuit who grew up in a Catholic environment in Jacksonville, Fla. with a large Maronite minority, and even a few Catholic Iraqi families. Please continue to be a voice in the wilderness.
Bert Mead, S.J.
The Word
In this Sunday rsquo s passage from Mark 9 Jesus offers pieces of advice to his followers about dealing with outsiders and insiders The different sayings were put together at the oral stage with the help of keywords like ldquo name rdquo and ldquo scandalizes rdquo or ldquo causes to sin rdq
Current Comment
Opening Church DoorsOne of the towering leaders of the church died on Aug. 24 at age 98, in the motherhouse of the Sisters of Loretto in Nerinx, Ky. Though Mary Luke Tobin, S.L., led a life described by superlatives, she may best be remembered as one of only 15 women, and the only American woman, to
The more thoroughly you lay waste a nationlevel its cities, slaughter its people, its noncombatant peoplethe more conclusive your victory will be.... If you want to turn a psychotic aggressor nation into a well-mannered commercial oneif you want to beat swords into plowshares, and infantry training manuals into business cardsyour best bet is to go for high levels of national destruction.
John Derbyshire, They the People
From every tragedy there is something to be learned. The Catholic Church’s struggle with sexual abuse of children by members of its clergy is no different. But the lesson is one for the entire country, not just the church. Although there were inklings of the church’s clerical abuse probl
In 2001 the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments issued an instruction on the translation of the liturgy entitled Liturgiam Authenticam. Five years later, at their semi-annual meeting in Los Angeles in mid-June, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
Arts & CultureBooks
Everybody wants a piece of Flaubert His contemporaries Victor Hugo Ivan Turgenev Emile Zola Guy de Maupassant and others hailed his genius Twentieth-century critics from Erich Auerbach to Lionel Trilling ushered him into the pantheon of modernism Jean-Paul Sartre ground out five massive vol
Editorials
Alma E. Miller was 102 years old when she died in 1994. For 78 of those years she had been a member of the religious congregation called the Society of the Sacred Heart. During much of that time, she was the mistress of studies, that is to say, the academic dean, in one or other of the schools for g
Henri Nouwen worked with many editors in his life. As it turned out, I was the last. I would not have foreseen this 10 years before, when I first brought him the news that I had been offered a job at Orbis Books. Well, he said, if someone were to ask me if you would be good for this job, I would say