From Our Archives

Self-styled progressive Catholics have, for over a generation, downplayed the role of charity in social action. They might revere Mother Teresa of Calcutta as a saint, but they dismissed her charitable approach as a superficial, Band-Aid response to poverty. Some even considered her approach dangero

Pope Benedict’s first encyclical letter is superb in many ways and well deserves the nearly universal praise it has received. I found Deus Caritas Est informative, inspiring and at times extremely consoling, even sublime. The world certainly stands to benefit from this profound reflection on t

Have you ever tried to explain the Catholic regulations on fasting to a Muslim, a Jew or a Hindu? Save yourself the raised eyebrows of incomprehension or the smirk that says, “You’ve got to be kidding!” Somehow “one full meal and two lesser ones not equaling it” doesn&r

Thirty years from now, students in ethics classes who study the Iraq war will be stunned by the manner in which ethicists twisted themselves into pretzels searching for a moral lens that would fit this war experience. They will be particularly puzzled by how the political realm continued to define t

Iraq was a preventive war. As preventive wars are wont to do, it has become a war of occupation (de jure and now de facto). Like other uninvited occupiers, the United States finds itself in a terrible dilemma: its very presence is fueling insurgency and terrorism, yet its premature withdrawal could

Some might find irony in the fact that at the time the National Pastoral Life Center was issuing a comprehensive report on the burgeoning numbers of laypersons serving in various parish capacities, the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops this past November was having difficulti

"Ruined for life”—that is the humorously ironic phrase used of young women and men who give one or two years of their lives to service in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. The phrase was coined by Jack Morris, the Jesuit credited with having started it all—of whom more later. Althou