My sister is leaving her husband. The last intact marriage of my dad’s six children is coming apart in the face of her husband’s bizarre symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. My brother-in-law returned from Vietnam with multiple decorations, including two purple hearts. He also bro
Were he still alive to celebrate his 100th birthday this year, Josef Pieper would probably be surprised to see that today there is greater need than ever for some of his major insights. In today’s workaholic culture, Pieper’s small masterpiece Leisure: The Basis of Culture remains an ant
I vividly remember first seeing Karl Rahner in 1964 at Georgetown University’s 175th anniversary celebration. A major symposium had been prepared, during which he delivered—that is to say, William Dych, S.J., read for him—the great lecture on the theology of freedom. Awestruck, I s
What are we to make of a genius who states categorically that he believes in angels, the Fall, the Gospels and the spirit of God brooding over human historyyet whose faith eludes us even at his most candid? One of the world’s and Christianity’s great poets, Poland’s Czeslaw Milosz,
Zero Tolerance and the Power of Grace
The Oct. 18 issue of America carries two thought-provoking articles: What Has the Charter Accomplished? by Archbishop Harry Flynn, and Where Do We Go From Here? by Thomas P. Rausch, S.J. Those pose the questions, where are we and where are we headed
Like yeast in dough, for 40 years ecumenism has been quietly leavening the life of the churches. It is so much taken for granted that we often do not recognize how different the shape of Christian life is today from 50 years ago and how close the churches have grown. For centuries, hymnody divided C
In light of the present worldwide prestige of the papacy it comes as a shock to realize that less than a century and a quarter ago an anticlerical mob tried to interrupt Pope Pius IX rsquo s funeral procession determined to throw the pope rsquo s corpse into the Tiber And it seems like ancient hi