By any measure, it is a stunning achievement. Since 1998, the artist Donald Jackson has been diligently at work on the first handwritten, illuminated Bible since the invention of the printing press five centuries ago. Under the auspices of Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minn., and The Lit

Glaciers are disappearing; Antarctic ice shelves are collapsing; the Greenland ice cap is eroding; the Arctic winter has grown shorter; and polar sea ice is thinner. Penguins are deprived of nesting areas, and polar bears are losing breeding grounds. Across the Northern Hemisphere, flora and fauna a

Philippine politicians and Catholic bishops seem adrift in their separate ships. The political ship is listing; the lights are going out, and every sensible person on board knows the ship is in serious trouble. The bishops’ ship, on the other hand, is fully lit; the passengers are comfortable;

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is brown. Outside and inside the bricks are varying shades of brown, the color of impurity and ruin. The whole atmosphere is messy, anarchic brown. The church reeks of decay and neglect. The walls have been blackened by centuries of candles, the floor stones are unev

It is rare that the author of one extraordinary book should follow it a decade later with another of almost equal power And yet this is what Helen Prejean C S J has done in The Death of Innocents An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions Already an acclaimed author for her Dead Man Walking

My youngest daughter is two weeks shy of 13. In two weeks, she will leave her childhood behind her and take off on the exhilarating jet of adolescence, although in reality she is already at cruising altitude. She has grown an inch a month over the summer, and the expression of disdain on her face ri

"I must have heard my grandmother tell my grandfather a thousand times, Get behind me, Satan,’ but I thought she made up that phrase. I didn’t know it was in the Bible! I thought it said somewhere that Jesus died when he was 33 years old. Where is that? Where’s the part where

Audit Finds Nearly Total Compliance With Bishops’ Policies on Sexual AbuseAn independent audit released on Feb. 18 in Washington, D.C., reported that as of Dec. 31, 2004, 96 percent of the 195 U.S. Catholic dioceses and Eastern-rite eparchies were implementing every applicable article of the U

This book applies a singular approach to the study of the Gospel By searching out and using the questions Jesus asked during his ministry the author provides readers with topics for Scripture study contemplation and also perhaps action Father Dear arranges these questions under 19 general them

What drew you to work for Gospel-based nonviolence?  Even before joining the Society of Jesus in 1982, I was influenced by the antiwar stance of two Jesuits, Richard McSorley and Daniel Berrigan—and also by the work of Horace McKenna, another Jesuit, who spent his life working on beh

My father performed the most powerful act of Christian charity I have ever personally witnessed: forgiving the young man who killed my brother.

At the Church of Saint Ignatius Loyola on Park Avenue in Manhattan between mid-summer of 1896 and June of the following year the seven Jesuit priests who resided there heard nearly 80 000 confessions all but 2 000 of them particular - that is listing the penitents rsquo sins since their last con

The United States today can be likened to a party of travelers in danger - in the path of a forest fire, for instance, or tossed about in a stormy sea. To survive they must make the right moves -find a road that leads out of the woods or discover a harbor that provides shelter. That means they must

In the wake of the Industrial Revolution an excess of consumer goods flooded the marketplace As it became clear that there was a surplus of interchangeable suppliers a way was needed to differentiate a given product from its competition Out of necessity branding was created as a way of doing ju

Ash Wednesday is the most countercultural day of the year. Repent! Turn away from sin! Now what could be more un-American than repentance and the admission of sin? Denial of guilt may be a human problem haunting each conscience and every culture, but we seem to have made a science of it. It is suppo

I had been a widower for almost two years when I met Beth. I had anticipated staying single for the rest of my life. Sharon had been a wonderful wife and mother; when she died of cancer in her early 50’s, I grieved deeply. The Lord, however, blessed me with the opportunity to find a transcende

Archaeological digs in the land of Israel often shed light on the Jewish and Christian Bibles and on the persons and events that occupy their pages Sometimes the discoveries make us rethink long-held ideas One need recall only the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls for example which is helping us