Culture

"Actualizing” Scripture, or bringing it to life, is based on the conviction that “the word of God is living and active” (Heb 4:12) and speaks anew to believers in different times and places. This process is carried out by theologians, preachers, teachers, artists, those who pr

Visiting Rome in early 1959, while still an Anglican priest, I asked a learned Benedictine from Belgium who was prior of the monastery where I was staying, whether he had attended the funeral of Pope Pius XII six months earlier. His reply, an apt comment on the style of papal liturgies of that era:

How to approach—I mean adequately approach—the devastating reality of Ground Zero from Ground Zero? What happens to perception, history, language, syntax and grammar—to say nothing of lungs, flesh and brain—at that level as the second airliner rips into the swaying tower fill

In October 2003 I was part of a scholarly meeting that honored the memory and accomplishments of Raymond E. Brown, S.S. It was entitled “An International Conference on the Gospel of John: Life in Abundance,” and held at St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore, where Brown s

In August 1917 Pope Benedict XV proposed terms of peace to the nations engaged in the First World War. Though so close in content and formulation to Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points of January 1918 that Benedict’s most recent biographer, John F. Pollard, charges the Calvinist and notorio

Where do I turn for fresh inspiration? How do I learn from others who practice the spiritual life? Spiritual reading is part of the answer. Great devotional classics encourage me; but I also need contemporary thoughts and insights. New writers (or those who are new to me) keep me reflecting and pray

Johannes Albrecht Bengel (1687-1752), the scholar generally regarded as the founder of New Testament textual criticism, had a wonderful Latin saying about reading Scripture: Te totum applica ad textum; rem totam applica ad te (“Apply your whole self to the text; apply the whole thing to yourse