East Timor: Up From the Ashes
Last summer I traveled to the other end of the globe and met a modern heroine, described by a friend as “our four-foot terrorist.” Maryknoll Sister Nora Maulawin earned that description during the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, when, under regular surveillance, she was followed, in
Vatican II: The Myth and the Reality
The memory of the Second Vatican Council, 40 years after the opening of the council, continues to arouse both acclamation and vilification. Its champions, in many cases, see it as having liberated Catholics from a long night of oppression, thus restoring to the people of God their rightful liberties
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
On Dec. 4, seven weeks shy of her 94th birthday, my mother, Marie, was called home to God. In a way, it was rather unexpected, the final “complication” following a fall down a flight of stairs 10 days earlier (nothing broken, miraculously), then a brief bout with chest congestion. I got
Letters
Letters
Knows Our Needs
I appreciated the article The Delight of Sunday, by Robert A. Senser (1/6). He offered some good insights into the observance of the Lord’s Day. One aspect he did not touch upon explicitly was one that I have been preaching about for years: the Lord’s day of rest is a gift, something that…
Editorials
War or Peace?
In the Western democratic tradition, debates over war and peace are recorded as far back as the Peloponnesian Wars. St. Augustine assumed, by the lights of his day, that the decision for war lay solely with the magistrate. By Shakespeare’s time, audiences had become sufficiently sophisticated
Faith in Focus
This One’s Called Praise
Psalm 150 happened in our youth center last night, although we might have to change some of the words to make it an exact fit:
Praise him with bass and lead guitar
Books
Woman and the Word
In his foreword to Finding the Treasure Within A Woman rsquo s Journey into Preaching the spiritual author Ronald Rolheiser O M I writes We are forever caught up in situations that are less than ideal full of tension and fraught with potential for self-pity and bitterness So what can we
Outmaneuvering the Bureaucrats
More words are misused in politics than in any other field of human endeavor Radical has come to mean something like extremist through repeated misapplication but it comes from the Latin radix meaning root radical politics is therefore supposed to be just another term for grass-roots activism Mi
Apologista Extraordinario
American Catholics old enough to remember Bishop Fulton J Sheen and his famous chalk talks on televisionsermonettes punctuated by occasional salvos against Communism psychoanalysis and birth controlwill be stunned by how much more worldly engaging and hip apologetics can be in the hands of a maes
The Word
New Life in Christ
Last Sunday we reflected on the new life that forgiveness from God and from others can offer us We saw that if we are the ones forgiven we must change our ways so that we no longer offend if we are the ones forgiving we must refrain from bringing up time and again the offense…
Give It Up!
The phrase ldquo Give it up rdquo signals two very different practices which are part of two equally different occasions The more recent meaning is a call to applaud a musical or dramatic performance of quality the traditional understanding is a summons to penance particularly during Lent As
Columns
Middle Age and the Unwrinkled Brow
Brace yourself, good reader. My subject is once again mortality. If you’re frowning right now, all the better. I have before me a brochure for Botox cosmetic treatment, which claims to “smooth the deep, persistent lines between your brows that developed over time.” I love metaphor,
Faith
The Style of Vatican II
John W. O’Malley, S.J.: The ‘how’ of the church changed during the council.
News
Signs of the Times
Pope’s Envoy Presses Iraq to Cooperate With InspectorsPope John Paul II appealed again for a peaceful settlement of the crisis in Iraq and sent a high-level envoy to Baghdad to press for greater Iraqi cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors. Cardinal Roger Etchegaray left for Baghdad on Feb.
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts