In All Things

I ve spent the last 60 hours amidst the wild diversity that is the Catholic Church and that is manifest so beautifully here at the annual Religious Education Congress Five students from Santa Clara University have traveled here with me and have been taking in all that the Congress has to offe

The LA Religious Ed Congress is not only a great place to hear fascinating speakers the most popular for the past few years seems to be Timothy Radcliffe O P the former master general of the Dominicans an unassuming and friendly man ho draws huge crowds with his talks on spirituality but also

Jesuit scholastic Ryan Duns SJ recently read Anne Rice s new book on the life of Jesus Christ the Lord The Road to Cana and found much to praise in a review on his blog A sequel to Rice s Christ the Lord Out of Egypt it suggests this famous author and recent convert has found Jesus

One of the benefits of spending a little time in another part of the country means that you see how Catholics elsewhere do things and do things very well Last night I participated in an innovative adult-ed program called The University which is based in the northern part of the Archdiocese

No matter who wins the Democratic nomination he or she will be facing a decorated war hero former prisoner-of-war son and grandson of admirals who speaks with such fluency and emotion when discussing the U S military that he virtually owns the issue Neither Obama nor Clinton can match John Mc

What is it about modern church architecture that drives so many Catholics to distraction Admittedly there are some real clunkers out there in Catholicland Typically when I m driving through a new town I can often spot the Catholic church if it s been built somewhere around the 1950s or 196

As a liberal Catholic there is a side of me that delights when conservatives are mauling each other in the press I know it is a sin but it is such a delicious sin and far from my most grievous But the recent intellectual scuffle between legal scholar Doug Kmiec and former Crisis magazine editor

Whatever you think of Barack Obama the guy has got game Three times within the first 32 minutes of his debate with Hillary Clinton last night Obama found a new way to say As the President of the United States I will After Tim Russert obnoxiously tried to pin down Clinton on a pledge to wit

Driving home tonight in a heavy slushy combination of snow and rain I listened to the news on NPR and marveled that a power outage in Miami was causing people serious discomfort no electricity no air conditioning Hard to picture when I am hesitating about stopping for gas which I need badly b

In a few days I head out to the annual Los Angeles Religious Education Congress a grand carnival of Catholic spirit people ideas books and prayers that span and exceed the various confessional ecclesiological political spectrums of North American Catholicism It is the only annual Catholic