Faith in Focus

I used to be a soccer mom, minivan and all. But this morning I had to roll down the windows on my 14-year-old jeep to get all the mosquitoes out that had festered there from the night before. I used to like to grill out on nice summer nights. I havent grilled out for the last two years, out of respe

Everyone seems interested these days in defining Catholic identity—movements and Movements, R.C.I.A. and Neocatechumenate, liturgists and “religious” educators, curial vigilantes and the rear-guard of “social actionists.” No one wonders how the Catholic laity define the

To be pastor for a typical Catholic parish these days is to attempt the impossible, for the pastor’s role has grown too large. It includes pastoral duties (preaching, counseling, presiding at liturgies, administrating sacraments, visiting parishioners), managing human resources (staff directio

As my spiritual directee described what she called “a meltdown” in talking with her husband, she sighed, “I just don’t care anymore.” Things were not going well at the parish where she is on staff. She was fatigued; her husband was not recovering well from an injury; sh

Witnessing the slow death of a people

When he resorts to civil disobedience, his long body hugging the earth of a Palestinian olive orchard or a home slated for demolition, Rabbi Arik Ascherman sets loose upon the Holy Land the ghost of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Like King, Ascherman lets the prophets’ hard-bitten calls f

The importance of solitude

Thousands of young volunteers are a bright spot amidst the city’s slow recovery.

Each year I spend at least a few weeks in the deserts of the Southwest. My favorite places include the high desert canyons of northwest New Mexico, the Great Sonora Desert of Arizona, Death Valley, and the Big Bend area in Texas. Many of my friends in New York City cannot quite understand the attrac