Mark, a Russian journalist, comes every year to the Holy Spirit Study Centre in Hong Kong for an update on the Catholic Church in China. This year he arrived right after the election of Pope Benedict XVI. “What is your opinion?” he asked. “Will Benedict XVI accomplish more than Joh
Have you ever returned to a book that you enjoyed as a younger reader? The experience can be enjoyable, disappointing and surprising, all at once. Last month, in a book club at a local Jesuit parish, I reminded the group that our next selection would be Mr. Blue, by Myles Connolly. Mr.
Modernity
The very fact that John O. Mudd does not mention religious brothers along with sisters and priests in running Catholic health institutions in his article From C.E.O. to Mission Leader (7/18) leads me to believe that he is not aware of the success of the Alexian Brothers
The logjam of denials about the torture and abuse of prisoners in U.S. detention sites in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo has finally been broken. Capt. Ian Fishback’s letter in September to Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, has cleared the way for steps that may at last establish
Last week, over our Wednesday morning cup of coffee, a conservative Christian friend smiled as she told me I am the most conservative liberal she has ever met! There was a time when this would have brought anything but a smile to my face. But that day, I laughed out loud. I thanked her for
On Nov. 11, 1841, a 63-year-old woman named Catherine McAuley was dying of tuberculosis in a commodious house on Baggot Street in southeast Dublin. Some years earlier, after she had come into a considerable fortune, she had had this building constructed for what she called “works of mercy.”
W H Auden - who like T S Eliot was pre-eminent in 20th century English-language poetry - remained at or near the center of Western cultural life from the 1920 rsquo s until his death in the early 1970 rsquo s With his gaze focused unflinchingly on matters great and small during those years A