Every Sunday before 9:00 A.M., a long line of cars snakes down a tree-lined road north of Baltimore, Md. In the Chapel of a Carmelite Monastery, a diverse congregation gathers for liturgy. Retired people, women religious, former priests and sisters, young adults with little children and some teenage

What would Jesus do This simple formula has found its way onto wristbands and T-shirts as WWJD It is promoted as the Christian rsquo s sure guide to the right moral choice But this is not the question Harvard theologian Harvey Cox uses to catch the moral significance of Jesus In fact he has rea

The Great Seal of the United States, reproduced on the dollar bill, has a mediocre design but an upbeat message. One side shows a bald eagle grasping in its talons arrows of war and an olive branch of peace. The reverse side pictures an unfinished pyramid surmounted by a great eye that represents di

Pablo and Dolores García were the fourth couple to approach me after the parish mission to ask where they could find a copy of St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises in Spanish. I had to explain that the little manual was not meant to be read like a normal book, but rather was to be use

Above the bluebleak priest the brightblue fisher hovers.

The one story that everybody in the theater tells about Jerome Robbins has him angrily giving notes to his dancers in either ldquo West Side Story rdquo or ldquo Billion Dollar Baby rdquo while backing away and then falling into the orchestra pit And no one says a word or makes a move to hel

Karol Wojtyla has always had a deep eucharistic piety. In 2003 he released his most recent encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, emphasizing the bonds between the Eucharist and the church. Last spring he announced the beginning of a eucharistic year, which began on Oct. 7 and will culminate at the me

In this game we confess the things

There rsquo s a well-worn Yiddish story about a yeshiva bokher seminarian who defiantly informs his old rabbi that he has become an apikoyres unbeliever And how long have you studied asks the rabbi suspiciously For five years replies the young apostate Ha snorts the rabbi five yearsand he

Record Abuse Settlement Reached in CaliforniaThe Diocese of Orange, Calif., reached a reportedly record-breaking financial settlement with 87 alleged victims of clergy sexual abuse on Dec. 2. Judge Owen Lee Kwong, who oversaw the settlement, ordered participants on both sides not to discuss details,

The image of the Christ Child wrapped in swaddling clothes in the straw-filled manger surrounded by nodding donkeys and loving, weary parents is so familiar to us, it is as though we were eyewitnesses of the birth. We have read and heard the story again and again as part of our core faith tradition

This illuminating and engaging book examines similarities and differences in the techniques employed to interpret the Christian Bible and the Constitution of the United States of America While this is not the only study of its kind I know of no other that is so thorough and by such a distinguished

On the weekend before Advent’s onset, CNN ran a special called The Fight Over Faith. At one point in the coverage of the conflict between Bible-believing Christians and secularists, someone, expressing what seems to be a conviction of many of her fellow belivers, professed a strict interpretat

Had I been writing this column 80 years ago, I would probably have lined up with those critics vigorously opposed to the talkies. “Who needs sound?” we might have argued. By the mid-1920’s film had developed into an incredibly sophisticated visual medium. The Russians had mastered