Paying the Piper
"In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes," Benjamin Franklin observed in 1789. On no day does this seem more true for most Americans than on April 15, the day they take part in the annual ritual of filing a tax return. Knowing that April is a time when taxes are much on…
What Vocation Shortage?
Despite all the talk about a vocation shortage, there is in fact no such thing in the Catholic Church. The real shortage is that of vocational discernment, and that is a very different problem. The shortfall in the number of candidates for the priesthood, the consecrated life and other forms of Chri
Child Soldiers and the Lord’s Resistance Army
Every night about 11:00 P.M., after four hours of more or less continued operation, the electric power goes out in Adjumani, Uganda. The night becomes black, dotted with a kerosene lamp here and there and maybe a rare solar-powered lamp. It is a small town of a few thousand people, a northern point
Practicing What We Teach
Taxes and tax collectors have been around in one form or another for most of human history. Tax collectors appear in many of the Gospel stories, and the Evangelist Matthew was himself a tax man. Many American Catholics may not realize it, but their bishops are often tax collectors too, regularly lev
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
As letters to America go, this one was nothing special. A Catholic physician had written to argue for a married Catholic clergy, listing a number of familiar arguments, including the superior ability of married Protestant ministers to relate to their congregations, the equivocal witness of early chu
Letters
Letters
Much Sadder Sentence
My friend Sam almost died last week. That was the first sentence of my article Growing Old in Prison, published in America last Nov. 10. Today I must write a new, much sadder sentence: my friend Sam died yesterday afternoon.
Five days ago, during a spell of unusually cold weather, Sam began to feel…
Editorials
Food, Shelter or Medicine?
The United Nations has reported that the number of chronically hungry people worldwide is increasing at the rate of five million annually. But even here in the United States, richest of all nations, hunger and food insecurity (limited access to nutritionally adequate foods) have been steadily rising
Faith in Focus
The Ministry of the Lector
The ministry of the reader at Mass is pivotal to the whole liturgical celebration.
Books
‘I don’t know who I am yet’: Gabriel García Márquez’s ‘Living to Tell the Tale’
The front cover of ‘Living to Tell the Tale’ shows the author as a wide-eyed child of 2, while the back cover shows the Nobel laureate as a distinguished gentleman of 75.
The Perfect Life
The confluence of advances in human genetics and reproductive science has resulted in the ability to design babies ldquo Designing babies rdquo is an imprecise term used by journalists and commentators mdash not by scientists mdash to describe several different reproductive technologies that have
A Book With Staying Power
When the second edition of Thomas Bokenkotter rsquo s book appeared in 1990 the publisher boasted that over 125 000 copies were already in circulation Tens of thousands more have surely been sold in the meantime That fact alone testifies to the merits of the book and the need it has filled This
The Word
What Does It Mean?
For months now we have been inundated with pictures of a bloodied Jesus Without in any way dismissing the concerns raised by this media event it should be pointed out that the scriptural Passion texts do not concentrate on the details of Jesus rsquo suffering In fact there are only three brief
Columns
Return of the Know-Nothings
Given the culture of grievance that seems to dominate so much historical writing these days, it is surprising how infrequently the catalogers of complaint see fit to mention the Know-Nothing movement in the United States in the 19th century. Even when the Know-Nothings merit a citation in textbooks,
Faith
The Ministry of the Lector
The ministry of the reader at Mass is pivotal to the whole liturgical celebration.
News
Signs of the Times
Keeler Prays With Victims at Day of AtonementIn a day designed to bring healing and promote understanding, Cardinal William H. Keeler of Baltimore prayed with the victims of clerical sexual abuse during a day of atonement on March 7, asking the survivors to forgive the church for the sins it had com
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts