We are pilgrim people. So the Second Vatican Council proclaimed 16 times in its documents. Ever since Catholics heard these words, they have echoed them in songs and chants: we are pilgrims on the march, “for here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come” (Heb 13:14

I was traveling toward a major metropolitan area on the last day of a long holiday weekend. You can picture the scene: as far as the eye could see, both lanes were clogged, moving slowly. It was the sort of traffic that leaves only one option: double the expected travel time, find an entertaining ra

On Oct. 6, 2005, a memorial Mass was celebrated at Holy Trinity Church in Washington, D.C., for Monika Hellwig, the distinguished theologian and educator who a month earlier had become a Senior Fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center. It was the very day and time when she had planned to lead a di

"Our mission statement? When people ask us what it is, we just tell them Matthew 25—the section about welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry and clothing the naked,” said Mark Zwick. I was speaking with Mark and his wife, Louise, about the Houston Catholic Worker, which this yea

In the summer of 1975, I met Paul Dent, S.J. I was passing through Chicago and stopped to visit a friend who was spending the summer at Loyola University. He invited me to stay for dinner, and we decided to go to a late afternoon Mass before we ate. The Mass was held in the basement of a Jesuit resi

Last week, over our Wednesday morning cup of coffee, a conservative Christian friend smiled as she told me I am the most conservative liberal she has ever met! There was a time when this would have brought anything but a smile to my face. But that day, I laughed out loud. I thanked her for recognizing in me a hard-fought battle that has landed me smack dab in the middle of the road.