Memoirists rule the literary roosts these days but sometimes with a bad conscience Shouldn rsquo t they be writing poetry or at least novels if they are serious writers Isn rsquo t this retailing of their personal lives a knock-off item or maybe even a cheat a pretense of authenticity undercut

Evaluated in ConscienceSister Jeannine Gramick’s unenviable situation (Signs of the Times, 6/17) calls to mind the dictum of St. Thomas Aquinas (envisioning, actually, an even more extreme situation): When an ecclesiastical decision that is evaluated in conscience as certainly unacceptable is

The timing could not have been more appropriate: On the first day of the annual conference in Washington, D.C., of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the Department of Housing and Urban Development released its report to Congress on worst-case housing needs. The title itself goes to the hear

Thanks to medical advances, Americans are living longer than ever before. A dark underside to this picture, however, is the rising incidence of elder abuse—an increase that is related to the growing number of elderly people in the United States. Demographers predict that the numbers of elderly

I am a slothful pray-er. At Mass I pray standing up, kneeling or sitting along with the flock. But at home I seem to pray more earnestly—in a prone position. Sheer laziness, probably, but I rationalize the act by assuring myself that God doesn’t mind. The posture isn’t important, n

If one is looking for a book on grief and grieving based on lived experience rather than more remote psychosocial theories then Thomas Attig rsquo s How We Grieve is the resource to read Although it is not a brand new book first published in 1996 in this reviewer rsquo s opinion no book publish

According to a recent newsletter of the Administration on Aging, I have something in common with 12 million Americans. I’m a caregiver. The great majority of us are women (75 percent, the A.O.A. reports). Half of us also work outside the home. This caregiving business is really booming. As the

My mother in an unusually arch moment once proffered a solution to all the church-state debates about Christmas cr ches on public squares Take the clothes off the Wise Men she said That way they could get an arts award Jane Alexander former head of the National Endowment for the Arts likes w

The first time I realized that I was old, at least in the eyes of others, was when a young woman stood up in a crowded bus to give me her seat. Resisting that sobering message, I continued to think of the old as they, not we. The definitive change came only a few years ago at Bethany, when I was wel

In the last few years, I have become increasingly involved with death. This involvement has come from three sources: my clinical practice as a physician specializing in geriatrics, my work as a Jesuit priest at an academic medical center and my own attempts as an educator to improve the care of the

One of the most beautiful and symbolic gestures of the Catholic faith occurs when a person is unable to get to church to participate in the Eucharist and the parish sends one of its members to that person with a consecrated host. The hunger must be satisfied. Without community a person is alone; wit

Encuentro 2000 Celebrates Diverse U.S. ChurchEncuentro 2000 opened with Native American drums calling the participants from across the nation to gather in assembly. At the end of its final liturgy, 5,000 worshipers tied ribbons to one another’s wrists, a traditional Hmong sign of sending forth

Kent State is my American Jerusalem. Ever since I stopped at the campus on a whim while driving across Ohio in 1993, I have made yearly pilgrimages to this sacred-secular ground of antiwar activity, where four students died and nine were injured. But I’m no nostalgic baby boomer, no former rad

Six years have passed over the Holy See since 1870, and its organization has been dying out year after year. All this darkness, confusion, depression, inactivity and illness, made me understand the Tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem [My soul is sorrowful even unto death].The author of these words

He must have been a sight:

The nation had little choicepun intendedwhen it came to the abortion controversy. I say this after 40 years as a reporter who entered the business with pride and left it feeling ashamed. I underwent this transformation largely because of the way so many of my colleagues handled the wording and shadi

The other day a friend called to tell me her newborn boy had been rushed to the hospital. The doctors had discovered a serious heart defect. "What can I do?" I immediately asked. The answer was simple enough. She needed companionship as she camped out day and night in the I.C.U. waiting ro

CD, Internet Site Aiming for World Youth Day AudienceYoung people around the world will be able to participate in some of the World Youth Day activities without leaving home, through Internet and music CD’s. The Nashville-based Gaylord Entertainment Co. has been contracted by the Vatican to cr