Of Many Things
Health care isn’t about statistics or abstractions. It’s about people.
The subject of every public policy question is a person, created and redeemed through love, writes Matt Malone, S.J.
Your Take
Should the conscience rights of medical practitioners be protected?
In their written responses, several readers invoked the Hippocratic Oath, from which the phrase “first do no harm” is derived.
The Letters
Reader Comments
Editorials
The Editors: Dental care is inseparable from overall health care
Dental care should be a priority in any plan to reduce inequities and improve the well-being of all citizens.
The Editors: Roe v. Wade has made abortion politics impossible. It needs to be challenged.
The ongoing political crisis is the persistent failure of Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood to settle the abortion question and the failure of the Supreme Court to offer any sign that these cases ever will.
Short Take
For prison inmates, health care comes slowly and unpredictably
The paramount concern of all prisons is safety. This is understandable, but it still seems unfair when security eclipses the health and well-being of inmates, writes John T. Booth.
Dispatches
U.S. health care is in crisis. Here’s how the Catholic Church continues to reach the marginalized.
Income is perhaps the unifying indicator of health care in crisis across all the margins of America—a reliable predictor of poor health outcomes from inadequate treatment for common illnesses—leading to the final measure of all: substantially lower life expectancy.
How the Jesuits got a for-profit detention center company to report human rights abuses
Jesuits West province requested that GEO, which runs 134 facilities around the world—including 69 detention centers in the United States—“report annually…on how it implements” its human rights policy.
Pope Francis’ almsgiver restores power (illegally) to homeless shelter in Italy
By reconnecting the building to the power supply and breaking the seals that prevented the building from having power, the papal almoner broke the law. But he was unrepentant.
Canadian Catholics skeptical new oversight office will stop mining exploitation abroad
“Will this ombudsperson really be able to provide justice for a community in Guatemala, who has really experienced crimes, including rape, the forced displacement of their community, and murder?”
Features
How one midwife is helping indigenous mothers connect to their childbirth traditions
These traditional, indigenous birth practices should never have been erased in the first place.
The opioid crisis demands a new solution. Churches are hoping to be part of it
The solution to the “current opioid crisis is one that involves the whole person.”
Faith in Focus
The secret history of Catholic caregivers and the AIDS epidemic
Many stories of ordinary people responding to suffering in extraordinary fashion have not yet been captured in forms that will last.
Ideas
Kate Bowler on the spiritual myths about health
Kate Bowler talks with the hosts of “Jesuitical,” Ashley McKinless, Olga Segura and Zac Davis, and explains what her cancer diagnosis taught her about American Christianity and more.
Books
Review: What can we do about rising sea levels?
A new book on sea-level rise by Elizabeth Rush is a welcome addition to the small but growing canon on what the changing climate means for U.S. residents.
Review: The unhealthy state of U.S. health care
The costs of medicine in the United States are addressed in different, though complementary, ways in two new books on broken U.S. health care.
Review: The ministry and mission of Catholic health care
A new book offers continuing critical reflection on the ministry of Catholic health care.
Review: Elaine Pagels on what it means to be human
A new memoir by Elaine Pagels plumbs some of the deepest questions about what it means to be human and how ritual and faith can help make sense of the unfathomable.
Film
How should art address addiction? These two films give us a clue.
Should filmmakers make the pain of addiction bearable to watch? In “Beautiful Boy” and “Ben is Back” they try.
Poetry
Arise
the now-maimed but still living parents beg, “Arise, come forth!”
The 2019 Foley poetry contest: Metaphors so simple and clear
Entrants to this year’s contest included poems about human trafficking, the Mueller Report, priestly abuse and screen addiction.
The Word
When Christians follow Jesus’ example, they make God present on earth
Christians who continue Christ’s mission make the divine presence felt in even the most hostile of places.
How has the Eucharist transformed your life?
With a faith like that of our biblical ancestors, we can find in Christ’s body, blessed and broken for us, the source of everything we need.
Last Take
This doctor is helping those on the margins in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains
We are called to a life of humble service and radical reliance on God but not to perfection, writes Tom Catena.
Faith
When Christians follow Jesus’ example, they make God present on earth
Christians who continue Christ’s mission make the divine presence felt in even the most hostile of places.
The secret history of Catholic caregivers and the AIDS epidemic
Many stories of ordinary people responding to suffering in extraordinary fashion have not yet been captured in forms that will last.
How has the Eucharist transformed your life?
With a faith like that of our biblical ancestors, we can find in Christ’s body, blessed and broken for us, the source of everything we need.
The Letters
Reader Comments
This doctor is helping those on the margins in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains
We are called to a life of humble service and radical reliance on God but not to perfection, writes Tom Catena.
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts