From Our Archives

Like many divorced and remarried Catholics, I looked down on the church’s annulment process, viewing it as cover for Catholic divorce, a process tinged with hypocrisy, reserved for the rich and powerful. Then one day, Walter Modrys, S.J., my pastor at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in Manha

This morning we confirm our commitment to this cause for which the Jesuits of Central American University in El Salvador gave their lives. They were not men of violence; they were men of peace and reason. Yet they died violently. Like the Servant of Yahweh, they did not cry out or shout out aloud or

My sister is leaving her husband. The last intact marriage of my dad’s six children is coming apart in the face of her husband’s bizarre symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. My brother-in-law returned from Vietnam with multiple decorations, including two purple hearts. He also bro

What are we to make of a genius who states categorically that he believes in angels, the Fall, the Gospels and the spirit of God brooding over human historyyet whose faith eludes us even at his most candid? One of the world’s and Christianity’s great poets, Poland’s Czeslaw Milosz,

I vividly remember first seeing Karl Rahner in 1964 at Georgetown University’s 175th anniversary celebration. A major symposium had been prepared, during which he delivered—that is to say, William Dych, S.J., read for him—the great lecture on the theology of freedom. Awestruck, I s

Were he still alive to celebrate his 100th birthday this year, Josef Pieper would probably be surprised to see that today there is greater need than ever for some of his major insights. In today’s workaholic culture, Pieper’s small masterpiece Leisure: The Basis of Culture remains an ant

I am cutting circles out of bright orange construction paper and turning them into jack-o’-lanterns. As the pile of scraps grows higher, I find myself thoroughly enjoying the unusual challenge of using magic markers to make scary-looking teeth. A few months ago, I volunteered to take over bull

When I got married at the relatively advanced age of 42, I wore my mother’s satin wedding dress from 1946, as my three sisters had done. I also carried her prayer book, wore borrowed pearls and tossed the bouquet. Since my father had died years before, my two brothers accompanied me down the a