The More Things Change…
“Ch-ch-changes/ Pretty soon now you’re gonna get a little older.”
Christian Spirituality: A New Model
Pablo and Dolores García were the fourth couple to approach me after the parish mission to ask where they could find a copy of St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises in Spanish. I had to explain that the little manual was not meant to be read like a normal book, but rather was to be…
Reinventing Contemplative Life
Every Sunday before 9:00 A.M., a long line of cars snakes down a tree-lined road north of Baltimore, Md. In the Chapel of a Carmelite Monastery, a diverse congregation gathers for liturgy. Retired people, women religious, former priests and sisters, young adults with little children and some teenage
Letters
Letters
Memory Comes Back
Many thanks to Patricia Kossmann for calling attention to the 25th anniversary of the death of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen on Dec. 9 of this year.
During the seasons of his Life Is Worth Living television series, the bishop would periodically decamp across the Hudson for a few days. His objective? The so-called bishop’s…
Editorials
Hope for a New Year
The Great Seal of the United States, reproduced on the dollar bill, has a mediocre design but an upbeat message. One side shows a bald eagle grasping in its talons arrows of war and an olive branch of peace. The reverse side pictures an unfinished pyramid surmounted by a great eye that represents di
Faith in Focus
A Call From Gunga Din
Last Sunday evening I had one of the more remarkable telephone conversations of my life. At first I simply heard a man’s cultured voice, with a smooth and soft foreign accent, very politely say, “Father Gelson?” “Yes.” “Father, do you remember a scouting trip to D
Books
What Remains Is Love
I met James Torrens S J for the first and only time sometime in the mid-1990 rsquo s in August at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in Vermont He was an editor then at America living in mid-town Manhattan in the years before I myself became the poetry editor there and I was eager to…
Rabbinical Thinking
What would Jesus do This simple formula has found its way onto wristbands and T-shirts as WWJD It is promoted as the Christian rsquo s sure guide to the right moral choice But this is not the question Harvard theologian Harvey Cox uses to catch the moral significance of Jesus In fact he has rea
Dancing for Identity
The one story that everybody in the theater tells about Jerome Robbins has him angrily giving notes to his dancers in either ldquo West Side Story rdquo or ldquo Billion Dollar Baby rdquo while backing away and then falling into the orchestra pit And no one says a word or makes a move to hel
Poetry
Hopkins in Ireland for the Jesuit community at Boston College
Above the bluebleak priest the brightblue fisher hovers.
The Word
Down Comes the Tree
Today is the official conclusion of the Christmas season For many it may be a rather sad time Gone are the brilliant lights that added warmth and lightheartedness to our lives gone the pleasant aromas of holly and pine gone the greetings of love peace and joy It is time to go back to ordinary
Follow the Leader
There are various ways of playing follow-the-leader In this simple child rsquo s game the challenge is Can you do what I do Since leaders seldom give up being leader this can become the game You rsquo re not as good as I am At other times follow-the-leader is more serious than childish compe
Faith
The Saint of the Sock Drawer
I can’t imagine what led me to focus my childish desires on St. Jude and spend in excess of three weeks’ allowance on a plastic statue instead of, say, another Archie comic book.
News
Signs of the Times
Pope Emphasizes Healing, Holiness to Visiting U.S. BishopsIn a series of ad limina talks during 2004, Pope John Paul II has encouraged U.S. bishops to regroup pastorally after the sexual abuse scandal and recover their prophetic voice on moral and social issues. The pope acknowledged that the abuse
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts