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Faith in Focus
Fifteen minutes after landing in Haiti, I was having serious doubts as to whether or not this trip was a good idea. I had come to Haiti accompanying another Catholic college group at the request of my own school, to see about the possibility of setting up a joint yearly immersion trip. Our guide, a
Arts & CultureBooks
The question that forms the title of Michael Crosby rsquo s work reveals the perspective from which he approaches the situation of contemporary religious life It is also a measure of hisand the book rsquo shonesty and realism He eschews a repetition of the contemporary rhetoric about religious lif
Editorials
Abusive labor practices continue to plague workers here and around the worlda circumstance that should give pause to those fortunate enough to earn comfortable incomes for themselves and their families. For many it may come as a surprise that even here in the United States, worker exploitation is pe
Faith
From the 1930’s through the 1950’s, Catholic parishes operated more than 100 labor schools in the basements of immigrant churches. Parishioners learned about their rights as workers, Catholic social teaching and how to organize unions. For many, being a good Catholic and a good labor lea
No painting in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York is more iconic than Paul Cézanne’s “Bather,” the pensive young man walking on water in a spare blue and beige landscape. For decades he greeted visitors in the first room of the earlier museum. He currently pres
Arts & CultureBooks
Eudora Welty closed her best-selling autobiography One Writer rsquo s Beginnings with the words As you have seen I am a writer who came of a sheltered life A sheltered life can be a daring one as well For all serious daring comes from within Originally opposed to the idea of a biography towar
News
Pope Benedict XVI Addresses Communion by Divorced and RemarriedDuring a meeting on July 25 with about 140 priests, religious and deacons from the Valle d’Aosta region of Italy, where he was vacationing, Pope Benedict XVI engaged in a wide-ranging discourse. Divorced and civilly remarried Catho
Many times in recent months, friends have asked me, “Are you optimistic over the situation in the Holy Land?” In true Jesuit fashion, my response has been, “Yes and no.” Responding to “facts on the ground,” I find surges of optimism are followed by waves of pessim
Letters
Ignatian Perspective
The article A Veteran Remembers, by James R. Conroy, S.J., (8/1) offers an excellent perspective on the war in Iraq. By calling attention to the disproportionately large number of African-Americans and Hispanics who are serving and dying there, he asks us all to consider whether or not this really is our nation’s war. In addition, his reflections on his experience in Vietnam (first as a soldier and recently as a pilgrim) are the clearest examples I have seen of an Ignatian perspective on one’s own experience. If we are immersed in the work of living in the present, it will always be messy. I appreciate Father Conroy’s reminder of this.
Thomas J. Brennan, S.J.
Arts & CultureBooks
One of the most enduring images I have of my visit to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City in 1999 is the proliferation of religious goods booths selling every conceivable souvenir or item of devotion which one must pass in order to reach the shrine itself I remember being troubled
Of Many Things
In 2001, Col. Pat Lang, a Knight of the Holy Sepulcher, a leading Middle East intelligence analyst and now a well-known television commentator, called together a small group to develop a program for the Knights to support grass-roots peacemaking between Israelis and Palestinians. Among the participa
I received a thoughtful e-mail message recently from a late 1980’s graduate of a Jesuit university. He is strongly pro-life, armed with 27 hours of philosophy and theology requirements to boot, and is at loggerheads with some pro-choice friends who hold the position that there is a distinction
Film
To qualify as a Hollywood blockbuster, historical epics have to have several things: an anachronistically modern hero, a ruthless villain, a contrived love story, cataclysmic battle scenes and, of course, beheadings. But historical epics also have to have something else: a Big Idea, typically an idi
FaithThe Word
Today’s readings indicate that the religious leader is appointed by God and is accountable to God. They take their positions and responsibilities seriously, because the people of God deserve the best that they have to offer.
Editorials
In the final week of July 2005, a month darkened by terrorist violence in London, the Irish Republican Army officially declared an end to its armed campaign to eliminate British rule in Northern Ireland. The time had come, the I.R.A. statement said, to pursue a political and democratic path to a uni
Being the only superpower means never having to say you’re sorry. In the year since the first photos of humiliation and torture at Abu Ghraib prison were leaked, there has been a flurry of Pentagon studies, jump-started criminal investigations and disturbing new revelations in the media. Yet p
Culture
In August 1917 Pope Benedict XV proposed terms of peace to the nations engaged in the First World War. Though so close in content and formulation to Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points of January 1918 that Benedict’s most recent biographer, John F. Pollard, charges the Calvinist and notorio
The Word
Nobody wants to suffer Every living being cringes from pain It is almost as if we have within us a driving force to run away from it And then we come across readings like today rsquo s that admonish us ldquo to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice rdquo They seem to call us to act against
Of Many Things
Tompkins Square Park stands out as one of the larger parks of lower Manhattan: 10 whole acres—remarkable in a city cramped for space. On weekend afternoons, I sometimes walk over to admire the beauty of the park’s trees and marvel at the diversity of the people who gather there, well-off
My 13-year-old daughter wore black to school today. When we pulled into the circular drop-off point at school, she said, "Look at everyone. We look like a bunch of Goths." (For those over 30: Goths, short for Gothic, are the adolescents who wear black clothes and black lipstick, resign the