"Is that stuff still going on?” the American college professor asked incredulously. He had heard of a Dalit boy whose college acceptance was revoked because he broke a coconut in his temple in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The boy, overjoyed at having graduated with honors
From Our Archives
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When Relatives Visit
The screen door flew open and in they stampeded: my sister, my brother-in-law, my grown niece and her husband, and their three boysone only six months old. And don’t forget the dog. Suddenly our house had shrunk in size. There were bags everywhere, plus cameras, baby equipment, toys and diaper
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Religion and Science in Dialogue
During the nearly 20 years I served as staff director of the Catholic bishops’ Committee on Science and Human Values, I frequently made the case that the annual dialogues the bishops conducted with scientists were a form of evangelization. The proposition usually provoked blank stares. Accordi
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Grant Her Your Spirit
The Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church of Greece voted in Athens on Oct. 8, 2004, to restore the female diaconate. All the members of the Holy Synod125 metropolitans and bishops and Archbishop Christodoulos, the head of the church of Greecehad considered the topic. The decision does not directly affe
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Secrets Behind The Forbidden Books
It was the most ambitious censorship drive the world has ever known, and the Rev. Hubert Wolf wants to reveal its secrets. Not only that, he wants to turn the Index of Forbidden Books inside out, posting on the Internet for all to see a guide to the confidential debates that lay behind it. Wolf is a
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The Ocean of Life
A great weight was settling on me during Christmas week. There were deaths among friends, Jesuit brothers and family, but the most haunting face of death came with an ocean of destruction called the tsunami. In a matter of hours, it killed over 150,000 people, most of them children. At noon on Jan.
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Prudence and Eucharistic Sanctions
Now that the turbulence surrounding the 2004 presidential election has abated, it is critical to revisit a question that deeply divided both the Catholic bishops and the Catholic laity during the heated months of summer: Should Catholic public officials who endorse the continued legalization of abor
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Talking to Techies
During the French Revolution, a bishop was brought to the guillotine for execution. But when the blade flew down, it stopped an inch short of cutting off his head. “It’s a miracle,” cried the crowd, and the bishop was released. Next, a philosopher was brought forward; but again, th
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The Metaphorical Wall
Martin Luther King Jr. fought zealously to achieve for all the equality promised by the Declaration of Independence. His passion for justice was inspired by the Scriptures and the spirituals of his religion. The equality he fought for was an equality created first by God. Yet in the United States of
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The Iraq War and Imperial Psychology
During the raucous postseason baseball celebrations near Fenway Park in Boston, a young woman named Victoria Snelgrove from Emerson College was killed by police, who apparently shot her in the eye with pepper spray. The Boston Herald published graphic pictures of her, and much of Bostonand the count