Witnessing the slow death of a people
Faith in Focus
Posted inFaith in Focus
Israels Rebel Rabbi: Invoking the Torah, a rabbi defends the rights of Palestinians to preserve their homes.
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
Posted inFaith in Focus
Dating God: A young friar’s experience of solitude
The importance of solitude
Posted inFaith in Focus
Finding God in post-Katrina New Orleans
Thousands of young volunteers are a bright spot amidst the city’s slow recovery.
Posted inFaith in Focus
Beckoned by the Desert: An antidote to subjective spirituality
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
Posted inFaith in Focus
Design for Others: Beautiful and low-tech solutions for daily problems
A small but important collection of ingeniously designed yet simple-to-use devices from around the globe is currently on display at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum (part of the Smithsonian Institution) in New York City, where it will be on view until Sept. 23. Organized outdoors in the lush
Posted inFaith in Focus
A Woman Who Cared
It would not be easy to forget Sister Lucía, the frail little nun whom I met in a strange and terrible place, the Manicomio de San Lazaro in Quito, Ecuador.
Posted inFaith in Focus
Musings of an Old-Time Confessor
I heard my first confession shortly after my ordination in the summer of 1959. It was a much different era from that of today’s church.
Posted inFaith in Focus
Face to Face
Often he has said that if just one word were to be inscribed on his tombstone, he would like it to be priest. As Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., president emeritus of the University of Notre Dame, begins his 91st year on this side of that monument, it is obvious that he means it. Impressively taking i
Posted inFaith in Focus
Liberal Catholicism
A friend recently said to me, I presume you regard yourself as a liberal Catholic. In response, I asked myself what kind of Catholic I am, and what is liberal? I came into the church 25 years ago at mid-life, without previous religious faith, practice or upbringing. My parents had been secular anthr