Editor’s note: In Germany, candidates for teaching positions in Catholic theology at universities and seminaries must receive a mandatum (nihil obstat) from a bishop. Since these academic positions are state appointments, this use of the nihil obstat arose over the last century in order to pre
Every parish priest and university chaplain knows the story. The young couple visits their pastor to make arrangements for their wedding. The pastor begins to ask the questions on the prenuptial questionnaire. The young man gives his address and later the young woman. It appears they live at the sam
* I am really hoping in that experimental chemotherapy. That’s what will beat this tumor!
Walden Pond is, happily, still intact, despite efforts by developers to destroy its surrounding woods and thereby the pervading spirit of Henry Thoreau, who lived on its banks for a year in the mid-1840’s. During a vacation week spent in the Boston area this past summer, I traveled to the pond
Word and ImageIt’s laudable thatwith everything else the Rev. Andrew M. Greeley is able to accomplishhe keeps up with the times and what is going on in the world around him (9/16). Father Greeley has such vital enthusiasm. Would that all of us noticed as well the beautiful skies in the photos
The United Nations Millennium Summit last month aroused no enthusiasm at Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid, The New York Post. The paper’s pundits were heavily sarcastic. In a Sunday roundup of the events of the first week in September, Linda Stasi claimed that environmental scientists had discov
The pages of America have lately been filled with articles on the question of liturgical translations. Bishop Donald W. Trautman, former chairman of the N.C.C.B Committee on Liturgy, and Cardinal Jorge A. Medina, head of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, have