Clericalism and the Sex Abuse Scandal
Clericalism in the Catholic Church is something like the pattern in the wallpaper: it’s been there so long you don’t see it anymore. That may be why, amid all the demands for change in response to the scandal of clergy sex abuse, more has not been heard about clericalism and the need to
The American Church’s Sexual Abuse Crisis
The clerical sexual abuse scandals in Boston and elsewhere have brought home how far the Catholic Church still has to go in receiving into its life the Second Vatican Council, nearly 40 years after that council’s close. The council devoted itself, quite deliberately, to the nature and mission
Our Catholic Watergate
As revelations of new victims of clerical sexual abuse spill into the news daily, we must face one mare discomforting truth: this scandal has sobering generational overtones. Many, if not most, of the victims are Gen-Xers, born in the 1960’s and 70’s. To be sure, those coming forward ran
Exit, Voice and Loyalty in the Church
Disclosures about sexual abuse among priests and coverups by the hierarchy have elicited, at least in Boston, levels of lay dissatisfaction and anger that rival the response to Humanae Vitae, the birth control encyclical issued in the summer of 1968. An interesting question now is whether lay reacti
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
Revelations over these past few months are enough to dizzy one’s mind. Even more dizzying, though, are the perhaps millions of words that have been penned in the media worldwide. Have we heard enough? Have we heard more than enough? What’s to be done? Shocking…scandalous…disgraceful.
Letters
Letters
In Remembrance
I had to chuckle while reading Elizabeth Ficocelli’s Avoiding Mass Hysteria: Teaching Children to Behave in Church (5/6). She and her young ones would be as discomfited as I was by the children wandering loose at Sunday Mass in the Catholic chapel of the state penitentiary in Tijuana. Some are visiting their fathers; others…
Editorials
Zero Tolerance
When the U.S. bishops meet in Dallas, Tex., on June 13-15, the sexual abuse crisis will be at the top of their agenda. The media, the laity and the nation will be watching, ready to pass judgment on the bishops if they do not meet expectations. Two issues have become litmus tests to measure how…
Faith in Focus
What I learned from my cat about the God who created us
I learned a lot about being from my cat Goose; I learned also something about how God regards our being, delighting in the work of his hands and the extraordinary beauty of our ordinary lives.
Books
Notre Dame’s Fighting Frenchman
Edward Sorin arrived in the United States from France in 1841 27 years old three years ordained and the religious superior of a band of six brothers in the recently founded 1837 Congregation of Holy Cross When he died in 1893 he was celebrated as the founder of four institutions of higher lear
Whence Human Depravity?
Andrew Delbanco has persuasively argued in his book The Death of Satan How Americans Lost Their Sense of Evil that the word evil has all but vanished from the American vocabulary and with it the symbols once used to articulate our experience of evil In the wake of the tragic events of last Septemb
A Way Out of Darkness
As a failed coup attempt in December 2001 delivered yet another wound to Haiti conventional wisdom again declared the Caribbean nation to be almost an economic and political wastelandracked by violence and devoid of all hope and promise But in Beverly Bell rsquo s new collection of 38 spoken-word e
Film
The End of Hollywood: Hollywood Ending
That delightful lull between the end of classes and the beginning of exams provided the perfect opportunity to catch up on movies missed during the last several months. As it turns out, Iand thus regular readers of this columnhave missed little. Two walls of the neighborhood video shop feature new r
The Word
Extraordinary Mission
While last Sunday rsquo s readings stress the gifts of God that guide Christian life the readings today stress the need to reach out to others The passage from Exodus introduces the whole sojourn of the wandering people at Sinai where God announces that they are to remember God rsquo s saving dee
Ordinary Manner
The Lectionary returns to Ordinary Time under the guidance of Matthew From now until the 24th Sunday of the year Sept 15 the second reading consists of excerpts from major sections of Paul 8217 s Letter to the Romans This is rather ironic since Matthew 8217 s Gospel according to some scho
Columns
Imagining My Golden Years
My working life is not all that hectic or stressful, but that hasn’t stopped me from fantasizing about retirement. I have never golfed and don’t especially want to, but I nevertheless enjoy imagining the feeling of strolling idly through verdant fairways and over footbridges that span gl
Faith
What I learned from my cat about the God who created us
I learned a lot about being from my cat Goose; I learned also something about how God regards our being, delighting in the work of his hands and the extraordinary beauty of our ordinary lives.
News
Signs of the Times
Vatican Reservations Emerging Over U.S. Direction on Sex AbuseRecent statements by two Vatican officials have underscored reservations in Rome over the direction U.S. bishops are taking as they formulate a national policy on clerical sex abuse. In particular, the officials believe it would be wrong
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts