Return to Saigon: Remembering the American evacuation from Vietnam
It is 5:30 a.m., June 1995, as the rising sun breaks into my little backstreet hotel room in Hanoi, and the light trampling of hundreds of feet padding past my window shakes me out of bed and into my shorts and sneakers to join the multitude of morning runners. The mass is heading toward West…
This Blessed Place: The faithful fiction of Marilynne Robinson
Reading a Marilynne Robinson novel is like going to church. Her books put us into conversation with the Bible, “a great ancient literature” (her words) whose powerful stories reveal their meanings gradually in multiple and ongoing ways. They posit a community of people who take their fai
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
From the wreckage of Britain’s broken dreams, the U.S. plucked the mantle of global leadership
Letters
Reply All
A Royal PriesthoodThe editors suggest all good things in “A Space for Women” (3/30), and I especially concur with Gudrun Sailer that the solution is not merely replicating secular structures. The problem of women’s roles in the church is a problem of an inadequate theology of
Editorials
Bridging Our Divisions
It has been very discouraging to watch the acrimonious debate over religious liberty in Indiana and Arkansas. The passage of a Religious Freedom Restoration Act in these states sparked widespread protests over possible discrimination and exposed a deep divide in our nation on questions of marriage,
Books
A Forgotten Failure?
‘American Reckoning,’ by Christian G. Appy
A Church That Can Change
‘The Future of the Catholic Church with Pope Francis,’ by Garry Wills
God Hides
‘White Man/Yellow Man,’ by Shusaku Endo
Art
Renaissance Dreams: Donatello crosses the Atlantic
Donatello crosses the Atlantic
Poetry
‘There Fell a Great Star’
Their shadows flickered and stretched to the west.The future fixed its lidless eyeOn concrete switchgrass, furrows of asphalt.Telescopes, searchlights aimed on highShot the flare of the mind at darkness.We stood on the moon but failed to scryThe star called wormwood. The signal changed, but the
The Word
Disciples I Fear
We might not say it outright although unfortunately many of us do but we are often not convinced that so-and-so is a true Christian We might know the person well by public reputation or just by name or we might not know the name of the person at all who bothers us or worse with…
Columns
Outside the Lines
There are huge risks to talking about women, qua women, in the church.
Current Comment
Current Comment
Women at Texas migrant detention center staged hunger strike to improve conditions
Faith
Confirmation Bias: Rethinking the sequence of the sacraments
What is the appropriate age for Catholic children baptized in infancy to celebrate confirmation? It might seem a relatively minor issue. Yet I believe the great efforts the U.S. Catholic Church has put into the new evangelization, its mission to “invite each Catholic to renew their relationshi
Of Other Things
Four Questions Before College
High school seniors are tired of being asked: Where are you going to school? What are you going to study?
Signs Of the Times
‘Humanitarian Disaster’ in Blockaded Yemen
The British charity Oxfam has appealed for an end to the fighting in Yemen and the opening of borders to allow entrance to desperately needed humanitarian aid. Nuha Al-Saeedi, an Oxfam program manager in Yemen, reports that conditions are getting worse each day as basic commodities run dangerously l
News Briefs
A new Kansas law banning an abortion procedure that results in dismemberment of an unborn child “has the power to transform the landscape of abortion policy in the United States,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, on April 8. • Two notable passings in Catholic
Magic Kingdoms
Three lessons from Disneyland for the Catholic liturgy
A Crackdown on Al-Shabab Terror
Faced with a fierce enemy driven by Islamic extremism, the Kenyan government has cracked down on funding for al-Shabab, the Somali group that claimed responsibility for killing at least 148 mostly Christian students at Garissa University College on April 2. The leader of the Catholic Church in Kenya
Suicide Prevention
Chaplains who are part of the Army’s first line of defense against suicide say they need more training in how to prevent soldiers from killing themselves, according to a Rand Corporation survey published online on April 7. Nearly all the chaplains and chaplain assistants surveyed said the
Fate of Marathon Bomber, and U.S. Death Penalty, Deliberated
It was no surprise that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted on all 30 counts in the Boston Marathon bomber trial on April 8; in an opening statement, his attorneys had conceded his guilt in the April 2013 horror at the finish line. The State of Massachusetts bars the use of capital punishment, but Tsarn
Remembering Armenian Suffering
In the run-up to the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, Pope Francis decried on April 9 humanity’s ability to systematically exterminate its own brothers and sisters. He asked that God’s mercy “help all of us, in the love for the truth and justice, to heal every wound and
Vatican Dispatch
Call Him a Saint?
The news, though ground-breaking, went largely unnoticed. The Vatican has given its clearance to open the cause on May 3 for the canonization of Dom Hélder Câmara, the “bishop of the poor” and one of the most influential Latin American church leaders of the 20th century.Cardinal Angelo
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts