Never Again!
Two summers ago I passed through the entrance gate to the camp at Auschwitz in Poland and read the chilling phrase, “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Makes You Free). I wandered the now still streets of that concentration camp viewing the scuffed, unclaimed luggage, some marked with its owner&rs
Home Missions Future Church
Growing up Catholic in the 1950’s, my first understanding of the term mission centered around pagan babies, milk-carton penny collections and stories of religious in full habit harvesting souls abroad. Only later did I discover that the term included Home Missions in the United States.These mi
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
November, with its feast of All Saints and the memorial of All Souls, reminds us of the dead who have played a role in our lives and whose presence we deeply miss. They may be friends or relatives or—in my case—parishioners, like those whom I knew well at my former parish in Washington,
Letters
Letters
Catholics and Politics
Msgr. Thomas J. Shelley, in his article Vatican II and American Politics (10/13), evokes a most interesting interlude in American history involving the candidacy of Al Smith. If many Americans wondered whether Catholics would impose an official religion if they became a majority, Catholics themselves had no need to speculate concerning their Protestant…
Editorials
Vouchers Ambushed
By a single-vote margin, the U.S. House of Representatives on Sept. 9 passed a bill that includes a school-voucher provision for low-income families in the District of Columbia. This is a small, five-year pilot program that has had several heavyweight titles. It has been rather grandly but accuratel
Faith in Focus
Building and renovating places of worship
Churches and cathedrals are not merely temples built according to some preconceived pattern to honor the deity, an enterprising designer or a loyal benefactor. They are powerful epiphanies or metaphors of what the church is, how it behaves and what it stands for in the modern world.
Six Months in Iraq
“My prayer during the bombing of Baghdad was that I would be ready to die,” said Cathy Breen. “The air in the city was filled with black smoke, both from the bombs themselves and from the oil fires that had been lit.” Cathy, a Catholic Worker who lives at Mary House on Manhattan&rs
Books
Bloody but Unbowed und so weiter
Hans K uuml ng b 1928 may well have been the 20th century rsquo s most important Catholic theologian mdash not the most original or profound to be sure but the most influential because of his astonishing breadth energy productivity and pedagogical skills in explaining liberal orthodoxy to an
Rooted Once More
Fenton Johnson grew up in the shadow of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky the youngest of nine children born in a Catholic county surrounded by a Protestant sea For years his family home had been like a second home to monks from the abbey who walked over for conversation a beer or for some spare part
A Towering Clergyman
A question that looms large for many Americans these days after the second Persian Gulf war is ldquo How does a religion that claims universal and exclusive truth fit into a pluralistic environment rdquo Such is the question at the heart of George M Marsden rsquo s new work Jonathan Edwards
The Word
The Church on the Hill
Some might wonder why we celebrate the dedication of a basilica that most of us will never visit Is it simply because it is the ldquo pope rsquo s church rdquo Or as the ldquo mother church rdquo of all churches should this basilica and this commemoration remind us that we are all children o
Columns
Losing a Friend
Comes another autumn and nature’s reminder that life is most authentically itself because of its impermanence. The cycle is indisputably natural, and yet much of it is tinged with irony, especially here in northern climes. Trees lose their covering just when they seem to need it most, the loons take their plaintive songwhich would have…
Faith
Building and renovating places of worship
Churches and cathedrals are not merely temples built according to some preconceived pattern to honor the deity, an enterprising designer or a loyal benefactor. They are powerful epiphanies or metaphors of what the church is, how it behaves and what it stands for in the modern world.
News
Signs of the Times
World Joins John Paul II in Anniversary CelebrationAs voices from around the world offered congratulations and encouragement, Pope John Paul II celebrated a 25th anniversary Mass and prayed for the wisdom, holiness and strength to keep leading the church. The Mass in St. Peter’s Square on Oct.
Portfolio
Christ in the Margins
This book, Christ in the Margins, took shape on a red plastic tablecloth in a diner in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This is where I met the artist Robert Lentz. The two of us spent hours sharing ideas to bring his vision to reality. Perhaps as we sat together, eyes shining, words tumbling, arms gesticul
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts