Erin Noteboom born in Iowa is now a Canadian writer whose two recent books illustrate a classic division of poetry into the genres of narrative and lyric Seal up the Thunder derives its title from the Book of Revelation ldquo Seal up what the thunder has said and do not write it down rdquo 10

Monika Hellwig, Noted Theologian and Author, Dies After StrokeThe noted theologian and author Monika Hellwig died at Washington Hospital Center on Sept. 30 after suffering a severe stroke. She was 74 years old. She had recently retired as president and executive director of the Association of Cathol

Cramped into a mobile home, we were standing in a circle holding hands, each person uttering a brief prayer of thanksgiving in Spanish. Three were Mexicans, three from Colombia, two from Peru, one from Honduras, one from Panama and myself, the lone “gringo” of the bunch. What made this p

In the catholic understanding, a saint is somebody who is all-out for God, full of faith, hope and love. Such a person, decidedly, was the Chilean Jesuit Alberto Hurtado Cruchaga. Hurtado, born in 1901, was four years old when his father died, leaving his mother saddled with heavy debts and forced t

Linda Greenhouse the Pulitzer Prize-winning Supreme Court reporter for The New York Times was off duty when in 1989 she joined a huge march supporting legal abortion in Washington D C This was shortly before the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a major abortion case and other journalists c

The late Pope John Paul II frequently called for a “new evangelization,” by which he meant the renewed preaching of the Gospel in regions long assumed to be Christian, like Europe and the Americas. Pope Benedict XVI continues these efforts. On Sept. 29, presidents of the 34 European epis

The last piece of mail I opened that Friday afternoon was a large white envelope bearing the return address of the Diocese of Cleveland. Having already received a memorandum about this mailing, I tore into the rectangular package with curiosity. Inside, I found the newly released Standards of Conduc

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, published by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, is a remarkable summary of Catholic social teaching. Those who were disappointed with the abbreviated treatment of Catholic social thought in the Catechism of the Catholic Church will be d

Jacques Maritain was the incarnation of Catholic intellectual lifea spirit alive with ideas supremely sensitive to other persons filled with the charity of the Gospels His journey in this world toward the homeland beyond was made possible as he thought by his companion and wife Ra ssa Oumanso

John Long, Leading Ecumenist, Dies at 80John F. Long, S.J., a leading ecumenist and one of the world’s foremost Catholic experts on Eastern Orthodox churches and theology, died in New York on Sept. 20 following hospitalization for emergency cardiac surgery. He was 80 years old. Cardinal Willia

Notre Dame is a world unto itself - a place apart Unlike Georgetown University or Boston College where students can get away from campus and wash off their school colors in the secular currents of Wisconsin Avenue or Commonwealth Avenue for a day or a night every night if they want Notre Dame s

My friend Sunday Obote was just 7 years old when the Lord’s Resistance Army stormed his family home in northern Uganda one night in 1994. The L.R.A. is a rebellious guerrilla group that opposes the military government of Uganda, a land-locked nation in east-central Africa. And yes, the L.R.A.

Outside my window, the bushes have turned, redder

"Getting out of prison, I had no job and no place to go, so I ended up in a shelter in Brooklyn,” said José Carrero. A recent graduate of the Ready, Willing & Able program of the Doe Fund, which helps homeless people become independent, José spoke these words at its annual graduatio

In 1918 the German religion scholar Friedrich Heiler published his great phenomenological study of prayer which for all its merits and sympathy for prayer was flawed by his rigid separation of prayer from ritual gesture folk custom and icon Heiler rsquo s restrictive methodology did not come

From the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, until the end of Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), Jews around the world engage in an intense annual period of repentance.

Has the pluribus in the vaunted boast begun to submerge even eradicate the unum America has become Robert Wuthnow the director of Princeton University rsquo s Center for the Study of American Religion argues in this new book a more religiously diverse nation Buddhist and Hindu temples and Mo

Andrew S. Natsios, administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, sent a shudder through the room at a food aid conference in Kansas City, Mo., in May when he said that food aid to the survivors of disasters is a higher priority than aid for development programs. Two-thirds to thre