Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Faith in Focus
The Sufi poet Rumi tells the tale of a holy man who sees a snake crawl into a sleeping man’s mouth. Shouting, the holy man wakes the sleeper and forces him to eat rotten apples. He then makes the astonished man run for hours, whipping him as the man cries out in exhaustion. Finally the former
Of Many Things
Social movements sometimes grow slowly out of sight, like Mark’s “seed growing secretly,” and then burst forth suddenly with astonishing rightness, just made for the times. So it is with the Religious Campaign Against Torture (www.nrcat.org). George Hunsinger, a graduate school cla
News
Israeli Citizen Named Melkite ArchbishopFor the first time, the Vatican and the Melkite Catholic Synod of Bishops have agreed on an Israeli citizen to be archbishop of Akko, Israel. Archimandrite Elias Chacour, parish priest of the village of Ibillin in northern Galilee and founder of Mar Elias Coll
The Word
The word mystery among its several meanings may refer to a religious truth that is known by revelation and is not fully understood by reason alone The readings for the Second Sunday of Lent highlight Jesus rsquo identity as God rsquo s beloved Son and confront us with the mystery of his death on
Iraq was a preventive war. As preventive wars are wont to do, it has become a war of occupation (de jure and now de facto). Like other uninvited occupiers, the United States finds itself in a terrible dilemma: its very presence is fueling insurgency and terrorism, yet its premature withdrawal could
Editorials
Cities vary in their responses to the needs of their homeless populations. Some are very mean indeed as the numbers of homeless people continue to rise. Take Sarasota, Fla. After state courts overturned two successive anti-lodging laws as applied to public spaces, the city persisted and this past su
Have you ever tried to explain the Catholic regulations on fasting to a Muslim, a Jew or a Hindu? Save yourself the raised eyebrows of incomprehension or the smirk that says, “You’ve got to be kidding!” Somehow “one full meal and two lesser ones not equaling it” doesn&r
Faith in Focus
I don’t want to be humbled; you don’t either, I suspect. Yet there are people who say it was the best thing that ever happened to them. Members of Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, say that they began to move toward sanity and wholeness only after they had been deeply humbled. Likewise,
Arts & CultureBooks
Reviewed in our pages in 2006, 'One Nation Under God,' offers a vivid portrait of public prayer in American history.
Columns
For parents and students in struggling Catholic schools, winter surely is the cruelest season. For it is now, in the first quarter of the year, that many parents and children learn that their school - for so many, their refuge - will not reopen its doors in September. Actually, this is a best-case s
Thirty years from now, students in ethics classes who study the Iraq war will be stunned by the manner in which ethicists twisted themselves into pretzels searching for a moral lens that would fit this war experience. They will be particularly puzzled by how the political realm continued to define t
Letters
Needs of Parishioners
While I agree with much of the assessment by the Rev. Frank D. Almade in Response to A Blueprint for Change’ (1/30), I believe that priests today do want to be leaders of the parish community. However, the lights, leaks, locks, loot and lawns can take an inordinate amount of time. This is especially true in a parish where there is only one priest, no business manager and no maintenance person (even part time). The demands of parish life, liturgical events and diocesan reports remain at the same intensity as they were some years ago when there were perhaps two or three men assigned to the parish. Pastors today, even though they have a support staff and a large number of volunteers, are still solely and ultimately responsible for the functioning of the parish. In this situation, they must set priorities; certainly, the liturgical life of the parish and the needs of parishioners must take first place. Otherwise, what’s it all about?
Noreen Cleary, S.C.
Arts & CultureBooks
In his new short story collection T C Boyle has gone a step further than William Butler Yeats who conveyed in his poem ldquo The Second Coming rdquo the alienation and disconnectedness of 20th-century life with the memorable image ldquo the falcon cannot hear the falconer rdquo Boyle descr
In the early 13th century, Francis of Assisi stood before Pope Innocent III and asked him to sanction a new way of life, which ultimately became a new religious order with a twist. The Franciscans would not be cloistered monks, but active brothers living in towns and countrysides, sustained by alms.
"Ruined for life”—that is the humorously ironic phrase used of young women and men who give one or two years of their lives to service in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. The phrase was coined by Jack Morris, the Jesuit credited with having started it all—of whom more later. Althou
Arts & CultureBooks
In Active Liberty Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer offers an alternative to Justice Antonin Scalia rsquo s advocacy of text-focused statutory interpretation and a constitutional jurisprudence that takes its bearings from original intent Instead Breyer argues statutory interpretation should lo
My oldest daughter was mugged last Saturday night. She was talking with two friends in the parking lot of a restaurant in Los Angeles before saying goodbye for the evening. Two young men approached her and asked her for a light, and as she offered her lighter, there was suddenly a gun at her head. T
Some might find irony in the fact that at the time the National Pastoral Life Center was issuing a comprehensive report on the burgeoning numbers of laypersons serving in various parish capacities, the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops this past November was having difficulti
Prohibiting men with certain characteristics from being ordained to the priesthood is nothing new in church discipline. More than 40 years ago, when I was still in the seminary, church law laid down a number of such impediments. According to the theology of the time, the office of the priesthood req
Arts & CultureBooks
In 1935 a 26-year-old Viennese Jew with a Ph D in art history but no job hastily penned Eine kurze Weltgeschichte f r junge Leser as part of a series called Knowledge for Children before fleeing to England where in time he became director of the Warburg Institute and the celebrated author of