James Martin, S.J.

Just wanted to remind our readers always to be on the lookout at our Books and Culture section for plenty of online only content that we will be posting on a regular basis nbsp We re always limited in terms of page space in the magazine and sometimes it s hard to turn around time-sensitive a

Yesterday members of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious met in Rome with Cardinal William Levada and members of the Vatican s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which is investigating the LCWR for doctrinal issues as detailed in my earlier post nbsp nbsp Today the LCWR ha

While we in New York were celebrating the installation of Archbishop Dolan and preparing for our Centennial Mass nbsp this news dropped nbsp Rumors had been around for the past few weeks among the secular media nbsp It s the news of the Vatican s investigation of the Leadership Conference of

Doubtless there will be some readers who will find this an inappropriate topic for nbsp the blog of a Catholic magazine nbsp And who will no doubt roll nbsp their eyes nbsp It is hardly a recondite topic nbsp But I have to ask Have you seen the video of the woman called Susan Boyle singing o

It wasn rsquo t until I was a Jesuit novice age 28 nbsp that I even knew there was such a thing as an Easter Vigil nbsp In 1989 when I was working in Kingston Jamaica and went to my first Vigil Mass at a Jesuit-run parish mdash with the Paschal candle the singing of the Exsultet the baptism

We nbsp spend most of our lives in Holy Saturday nbsp For the most part our daily lives are not moments of sheer abject terror mdash like Good Friday nbsp Nor are they moments of delirious exaltation mdash like Easter Sunday nbsp Rather we are often in the ldquo middle time rdquo as th

The Passion can seem so far away nbsp Despite the fact that many of us will listen very carefully to the story of the Passion today the events that happened in 1st-century Palestine can seem unimaginably distant nbsp When I was growing up in suburban Philadelphia it seemed not participatory b

nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp What is it like to let Jesus serve you nbsp The answer is in the look on St Peter s face in this my favorite nbsp painting by Ford Madox nbsp Brown of t