For two extraordinary days in the summer of 2004, 175 religious and lay leaders gathered in Philadelphia to wrestle with the future of the Catholic Church in this country. The site of the conference – the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania – could not have been more appropriate, given
From Our Archives
Easing Abortion’s Pain
Where will the next great battle be fought in the struggle for the hearts and minds of the American public regarding abortion? Perhaps it will be ignited by the recent proposal of a law that would oblige abortion providers to tell women about the pain that unborn children experience during this proc
Reborn From Ashes
The cedars of Lebanon have experienced the axes of many civilizations upon their trunks over the centuries. Conquerors have repeatedly invaded the land, reigned over its inhabitants and reaped its fruits. Time and again, however, the Lebanese have managed to be reborn from the ashes. Today they rise
Flight From New Orleans
Getting out of New Orleans has never been as easy as getting in. The city has too much magnetic charm. At least it used to. Expecting in this case, however, that getting back in might be harder than getting out, my Jesuit community and I had decided to ride out Hurricane Katrina at our downtown chur
Katrina’s Rainbow
New Orleans was the first city that felt like family to me, and because I had moved so much growing up, family was the only thing I understood as home. A year after I graduated from Loyola University New Orleans, I was in New York City serving a volunteer year and planning to move back as soon as I
Krispy Kremes and The Da Vinci Code
The movie fades up to the hushed tones of violins, the camera moving dreamlike through long hallways in an enormous, darkened museum. A guard walks in the distance. We pause; the camera pans left. Before us, next to a sign written in French, is the “Mona Lisa.” She looks down on us with
Why Don’t Catholics Share Their Faith?
In these pages in the spring of 2004, John C. Haughey, S.J., noted that many of his non-Catholic students are not shy about making personal faith statements, both in the classroom and outside. Catholic students, on the other hand, seldom do so (“Church-ianity and Christ-ianty,” 5/24/04).
A Letter to Young American Catholics
My dear younger brothers and sisters: I write, as an older brother, to encourage you. Last month more than a million young Catholics gathered with Pope Benedict XVI in Cologne for World Youth Day. Twenty-five thousand of them were from the United States. The Lord entrusts the future of the church to young people like them and you. Our countryman Walt Whitman once wrote:
Youth,large, lusty, loving,
A Shared Belief
The Islamic Society of North America, the Managing the Atom Project of the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Churches’ Center for Theology and Public Policy convened a group of 24 religious leaders and scholars, with equal representation
Hope and Healing
"After viewing a city full of funerals, we return to our homes only to find them empty of our loved ones.” That’s what Petrarch wrote about the Black Death (bubonic plague), which in 1348 devastated Western Europe, killing an estimated two-thirds or more of the population. Europe re
