At the ripe old age of 32, I found myself in the midst of a mini-midlife crisis of sorts. Nothing seemed to be going my way. I was heartbroken and depressed, facing an uncertain career outlook in a terrible economy and looking for a cure for my ailing spirit. I found it in the wide open spaces of Mo

Who was Jesus, and what did he say and do? Was Jesus really raised from the dead? Why and when did Christians begin to worship Jesus? These questions go to the roots of Christian faith. The three massive books discussed here provide pertinent information and interpretive options that Christians toda

Ever since John Gallagher rsquo s work Time Past Time Future 1990 chronicled the disintegration of the manualist genre in moral theology we have needed a serious study that would examine the method content style and purpose of the post-manualist conciliar-inspired fundamental moral theology

The Senate is in a row over the leak of a memo written by a staffer for the Democratic minority members of the Committee on Intelligence. It urges the Democrats, led by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, to break with the Republican majority and conduct its own inquiry into events lead

The Catholic Church in the United States is going through the greatest crisis in its history. Dealing with crises is not a problem unique to church leaders; it is a task faced by leaders of any complex organization. When faced with a crisis, U.S. corporate leaders often bring in a firm like McKinsey

The Catholic Church has taught for over a century that the use of money, capital and markets must be subservient to the good of humankind. It has said that free competition though justified and quite useful within certain limits, cannot be an adequate controlling principle in economic affairs, and h

She is edgy and bored in the adult

Boston Archbishop Calls Same-Sex Decision Alarming’Reacting to a decision by Massachusetts’ highest court to overturn a ban on same-sex marriages, Archbishop Sean P. O’Malley of Boston called it alarming and said he hopes the state’s legislators will have the courage and comm

During the last couple of years, more than one American bishop has said that the clergy shortage is not unique to the Catholic Church. A recent expression of this view is found in Bishop Wilton Gregory’s letter of Aug. 29, 2003, to Archbishop Timothy Dolan of Milwaukee, in which he states: A n

Walking from the bus station to Viva House, the home of the Baltimore Catholic Worker, I passed block after block of boarded-up homes. I was coming to celebrate Viva House’s 35th anniversary and to visit its co-founders, Willa Bickham and her husband, Brendan Walsh, whom I knew even before I j

A Declaration of Interdependence was published originally in England as The World We rsquo re In Its author a reporter for The London Observer described the British edition as a call to arms against a conservative unilateral world view The military metaphor is apt The book is a slashing take-

It’s called Washington Heights. What heights, and why Washington? The Washington part refers to our first president, and heights to a section of Manhattan’s Upper West Side that indeed deserves the name because of its high elevation. Boarding the No. 1 Broadway Local subway, I took a rid

The story of Terri Schiavo is probably known to most Americans. A 39-year-old Floridian, she has been sustained by a tube supplying artificial nutrition and hydration since she suffered, 13 years ago, brain damage brought on by a heart attack. The brain damage has reduced her to a condition called P

A fascination with ancient Buddhist temples led me in August 2003 to visit Borobudur, an eighth-century monument located on the Indonesian island of Java. But the visit also taught me a great deal about kejawen (“Javanese”) piety—the syncretistic blend of Hinduism and Buddhism with

Many academics seem to have the paranoid conviction that like Rodney Dangerfield they get no respect surrounded as they are by yahoo students apparatchik administrators Babbittish trustees and a clueless public that takes them for tenured radicals overpaid slackers summers off sabbaticals

As U.S. casualties mount and stories of military funerals compete for front-page attention with positive Pentagon assessments, the future of U.S. military action in Iraq threatens to become an issue in the presidential politics of the 2004 election year. Democratic candidates have already suggested

He was standing on the side of a rural road in Southern Arizona, about 50 miles from the Mexican border, where the Sonoran desert is dry, desolate and deadly. As I drove by, I could see he was holding up an empty water jug in his hand, asking for help. I kept driving for the next mile, but thought o

Esperanza is Spanish for hope, and one person whose presence has brought hope to Hispanic immigrants in Delaware’s poultry processing plants is Rosa álvarez. A Carmelite Sister of Charity who is herself an immigrant—from Spain, years ago—she is one of the founders of a commu