Everyone seems interested these days in defining Catholic identity—movements and Movements, R.C.I.A. and Neocatechumenate, liturgists and “religious” educators, curial vigilantes and the rear-guard of “social actionists.” No one wonders how the Catholic laity define the

To be pastor for a typical Catholic parish these days is to attempt the impossible, for the pastor’s role has grown too large. It includes pastoral duties (preaching, counseling, presiding at liturgies, administrating sacraments, visiting parishioners), managing human resources (staff directio

We still miss our mother, but with no regrets and an awareness of the flow of life.

As my spiritual directee described what she called “a meltdown” in talking with her husband, she sighed, “I just don’t care anymore.” Things were not going well at the parish where she is on staff. She was fatigued; her husband was not recovering well from an injury; sh

Witnessing the slow death of a people

When he resorts to civil disobedience, his long body hugging the earth of a Palestinian olive orchard or a home slated for demolition, Rabbi Arik Ascherman sets loose upon the Holy Land the ghost of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Like King, Ascherman lets the prophets’ hard-bitten calls f