Motherhood is monastic. Walking into Gethsemane Abbey during Night Prayer, I had to catch my breath. Not one to be swept up by hero worship, even of such a worthy figure as Thomas Merton (or for that matter, Kathleen Norris), I had braced myself to be critical. Nevertheless, entering the chapel, sea
In recent years several states have passed laws mandating that the Irish Famine of the 1840 rsquo s be taught in public schools alongside African slavery and the Jewish Holocaust Equating this trinity of horrors Famine curriculum supporters say is not only appropriate but historically enlighten
Right beneath the title the jacket of The Whore rsquo s Child displays a bare black cross and we soon discover why The subject of the title story is of all things an aging nun whose beloved absent father turns out to have been her hated mother rsquo s pimp What the embittered Sister Veroniqu
The topic of suffering is never far from the lips of theologians or those who take seriously their relationship with their God In light of the horrific events of Sept 11 2001 the questions posed by suffering especially innocent suffering seem especially pertinent for examination John E Thiel
During the moving memorials of the attacks on Sept 11 2001 we gazed upon a collage of the extraordinary goodness of ordinary people Those who would flinch if called saints acted just as saints did Today we celebrate such saints throughout the ages mdash that great cloud of witnesses whose lives
Just for fun with the help of Google I did a search on the World Wide Web for the word ldquo love rdquo I found there were at least 54 700 000 sites well ahead of ldquo hate rdquo with 6 400 000 ldquo All You Need Is Love rdquo was a stunning Beatles rsquo hit in 1967 and the Centrum S
As the daughter of a woman who prized her Irish heritage, I grew up believing that most of life’s problems could be solved over a comfortable cup of tea. When a crisis occurred in my family when I was a child, my mother’s first words were not “Call 911,” but rather “Put