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The Word
There are various ways of playing follow-the-leader In this simple child rsquo s game the challenge is Can you do what I do Since leaders seldom give up being leader this can become the game You rsquo re not as good as I am At other times follow-the-leader is more serious than childish compe
Arts & CultureBooks
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
News
Pope Emphasizes Healing, Holiness to Visiting U.S. BishopsIn a series of ad limina talks during 2004, Pope John Paul II has encouraged U.S. bishops to regroup pastorally after the sexual abuse scandal and recover their prophetic voice on moral and social issues. The pope acknowledged that the abuse
Faith
I can’t imagine what led me to focus my childish desires on St. Jude and spend in excess of three weeks’ allowance on a plastic statue instead of, say, another Archie comic book.
Faith in Focus
Last Sunday evening I had one of the more remarkable telephone conversations of my life. At first I simply heard a man’s cultured voice, with a smooth and soft foreign accent, very politely say, “Father Gelson?” “Yes.” “Father, do you remember a scouting trip to D
Arts & CultureBooks
I met James Torrens S J for the first and only time sometime in the mid-1990 rsquo s in August at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in Vermont He was an editor then at America living in mid-town Manhattan in the years before I myself became the poetry editor there and I was eager to meet hi
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
Letters
Memory Comes Back
Many thanks to Patricia Kossmann for calling attention to the 25th anniversary of the death of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen on Dec. 9 of this year.
During the seasons of his Life Is Worth Living television series, the bishop would periodically decamp across the Hudson for a few days. His objective? The so-called bishop’s suite in St. Michael’s Monastery of the Passionists in Union City, N.J.
As seminarians, we took turns bringing Bishop Sheen a mid-morning snack of coffee, or mid-afternoon tea with a Danish or cookies. We all noticed the small piles of lined yellow foolscap on the floor along the walls. One classmate finally asked: Bishop, are those the drafts of your future talks? The answer: No, Confrater, each pile has drafts of separate paragraphs for the one talk I’m working on at the time.
As I begin to write a new homily, that memory comes back and gives me the courage to keep trying. Maybe it’s the same for my good classmates.
(Most Rev.) Norbert M. Dorsey, C.P.
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
Books
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
Film
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
Editorials
In the Liturgy of the Hours, the church salutes the expected Messiah as the Orient from on high (Lk 1:78). The appellation pictures the sun rising from the East to shed its glory on a world enshrouded in darkness. The French term Levant uses the same metaphor to refer to the eastern littoral of the
The Word
During Christmas time we have been attentive to the child born to fulfill the promises made long ago Today we focus on Mary the one from whose flesh the child was fashioned In all the Christmas stories she is silent explaining nothing when visitors come to see the marvels that have taken place
Faith
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
Books
In Wonderful and Dark Is This Road Emilie Griffin the respected author or co-editor of 14 books including Turning Reflections on the Experience of Conversion and Clinging The Experience of Prayer has written in a comfortably ruminative tone an accessible introduction to mysticism Griffin ha
News
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,
Books
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
The Word
The very first reading for the First Sunday of Advent included a promise that all nations would stream toward the mountain of the Lord rsquo s house Is 2 2 Today we see this promise fulfilled Magi from the East arrive to pay homage to the newborn king Though the Gospel does not say much about t