The face of leadership in Catholic organizations has changed dramatically in less than a generation. Catholic health care offers a clear illustration. Forty years ago most of the presidents of Catholic hospitals in the United States were Catholic women religious. Today those hospitals are nearly all
From Our Archives
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Hope at Work
"I am the only male member of my family on either side who hasn’t been in jail,” Mark Ford tells me. “During high school I sold and used drugs, I dropped out, and got kicked out twice.” We were speaking in a row house in Camden, N.J., that serves as office space for Hope
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Ministry of Law and Gospel
I used to be a priest, a minister of the Gospel, but I left the priesthood, went to law school and became a lawyer. The other day, as I waited my turn to go before the judge in one of my cases in the criminal courts building here in Houston, I was struck by some fundamental similarities between my f
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Take and Read
A freshman came to my office to discuss his first essay assignment in my lecture course on classics of Christian literature. We had been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters From Prison. The student wondered what the Lutheran pastor imprisoned and executed by the Nazis would have thought of t
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I Know It When I See It
It seems to have become commonplace lately, especially among those who try to assess the state of the world and make recommendations about the sort of leadership that is needed in the Catholic Church, to bemoan the de-Christianization of Europe, an idea the media have embellished by contrasting Old
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Many Sticks, Few Carrots
Are North Korea and the United States moving toward the brink of war, perhaps one that would involve the use of nuclear weapons? Some experts think so. Former Defense Secretary William Perry, for one, has warned that the United States and North Korea are drifting toward war. Yet President Bush acts
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Magis 2005
The Rule of Saint Benedict states, in Chapter Three: “The reason we have said that all should be called for counsel is that the Lord often reveals to the younger what is best.” This awareness was doubtless in the mind of our own newly elected Benedict XVI when he said in his first messag
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Benedict: What’s in a Name?
By their choice of a name, newly elected popes have tried to project an ideal for their pontificate.
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Leftover Embryos
It should come as no surprise to readers of this column that I find President Bush profoundly deficient in implementing his culture of life theme. Sometimes, when I fail in charity and am tempted to judge his character, I even suspect it a cynical move to use an expression famously invoked by Pope J
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Hopes for U.N. Reform
Some suspect that the Holy See has no interest in United Nations reform. To be sure, the Holy See is not a full member of the United Nations; it holds the status of special observer. This status does not diminish its interest in the reform of the United Nations. At the United Nations, observer state