John F. Kavanaugh

I knew the hate would be coming, but not with such ferocity, such immediacy and such prominence. Time magazine’s specially rushed issue portraying the World Trade Center atrocity ran one opinion piece, on its last written page. It was Lance Morrow’s Case for Rage and Retribution. But it

There are times when even an atheist must ask, Who or what can save us from our plight? Sometimes the great rages of the earth, the physical evils of earthquake and tidal wave prompt the question. More often, it is the appalling moral evil of the human heart. Who can save humanity from itself?Even t

A friend recently asked me whether the Catholic Church, in its opposition to embryonic stem cell research, is committing a folly equal to its condemnation of Galileo. An apt question: the dawn of genetics is as revolutionary as the idea that the earth moved around the sun. Galileo’s tool was t

In 1985 James Froemsdorf, a Missouri state trooper, a husband and the father of three young daughters, was shot three times and killed by a wanted felon who had been stopped for speeding. Although the criminal was handcuffed, he was able to free one of his hands, grab the officer’s gun and kil

About 10 years ago, a home video of a young Dutch woman named Maria appeared in a PBS presentation called Choosing Death. Weighing 42 pounds, she was backed against a stark white wall, her sunken eyes searching, darting. She was 25 years old. For 14 of those years she had been suffering from anorexi

The New Yorker cover for the new millennium’s first week of March was a perfect cartoon rendition of our culture’s inverted values. A theater marquee, hyping some nameless show, is plastered with rave banner reviews of nameless critics. A New Low! Gratuitously Prurient! Lurid! Rock Botto

On the day the most complete mapping of the human genome was announced, a human-made spacecraft landed on an asteroid named Eros, almost 200 million miles away from earth. Issuing commands into deep space, smart little specks on our planet slowed the craft’s descent onto the asteroid for a lan

When thinking of moral courage in the context of political life, I have at times imagined a bold politician refusing to support unjust laws. I could see someone who, like Eliot Richardson in those Watergate days, would step down from high office rather than execute the will of a superior who was dem

When I was a Jesuit scholastic teaching ethics at Rockhurst College (now Rockhurst University) in Kansas City over 30 years ago, a student presented me with a Yuletide advertisement for a new credit card. Its headline: What Gives? Mastercharge. I had spent a class analyzing ads, commenting on the co

It is a strange happenstance that many people, whether justified or not, see foreboding clouds looming over Catholic health care, Catholic higher education, and Catholic ecumenism. While some may contend that the problem is within these institutions, others fear that the threat is from the hierarchi