From Our Archives

When reports began to surface within the Boy Scouts of America that a male nurse was touching scouts inappropriately during overnight camping trips, the executive leadership, not pleased, replaced the nurse. Later, however, his replacement was removed after similar allegations. Confused and deeply d

From every tragedy there is something to be learned. The Catholic Church’s struggle with sexual abuse of children by members of its clergy is no different. But the lesson is one for the entire country, not just the church. Although there were inklings of the church’s clerical abuse probl

In 2001 the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments issued an instruction on the translation of the liturgy entitled Liturgiam Authenticam. Five years later, at their semi-annual meeting in Los Angeles in mid-June, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

The more thoroughly you lay waste a nationlevel its cities, slaughter its people, its noncombatant peoplethe more conclusive your victory will be…. If you want to turn a psychotic aggressor nation into a well-mannered commercial oneif you want to beat swords into plowshares, and infantry training manuals into business cardsyour best bet is to go for high levels of national destruction.

John Derbyshire, They the People

Henri Nouwen, a popular and prolific author and spiritual guide, died suddenly on Sept. 21, 1996, from the complications of two major heart attacks. En route to Russia, he was going to film a special for the BBC on Rembrandt’s famous painting “The Return of the Prodigal Son,” at th

In These Pages: From September 11, 2006

When I left the World Trade Center in October 2001, after working there for several weeks alongside fellow Jesuits and other volunteers, I wondered what would become not only of the physical site but of the people we had met. One ironworker, who spent long days at Ground Zero cutting apart the steel

Pundits have been busy since mid-summer speculating about “where we are” five years after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. But analysis of whether we are safer now, or if we are winning the global war on terror must be balanced by some reflection on the ethical climate of the hal

Voters will decide the fate of the nearly total ban on abortions that was recently passed overwhelmingly by the South Dakota Legislature and signed by that state’s governor, Mike Rounds. On June 19, 2006, South Dakota’s secretary of state, Chris Nelson, confirmed that the legislation, wh