What Has the Charter Accomplished?
When the Catholic Bishops of the United States adopted the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in June 2002, they included a provision calling for a review of the charter in two years. An Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse (A.H.C.S.A.), established for this purpose by the U.S. Conf
Where Do We Go From Here?
The scandal caused by the sexual abuse of young people by members of the Catholic clergy has made the laity take a new and critical look at the way their church operates. While the vast majority of Catholics have remained loyal to the church, many have a clear sense that something is seriously wrong
The Deep Mystery of God
The Hubble Telescope recently peered as deep into space as humans have ever looked. Officials of the Space Telescope Science Institute traced light that has been speeding toward the space we now occupy for 13 billion years, to within a stone’s throw of the beginning of the universe. In order t
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
Smoking began for me at 16. My friends started then too, and because it was forbidden on school grounds, the incentive of rule-breaking made it all the more attractive. After starting with Pall Malls and then Marlboros, I went on to Salems in graduate school, where any nonsmoking student was viewed
Letters
Letters
Posture, Not Policy
I have become increasingly confused by the demand of Catholic thinkers like Germain Grisez (Catholic Politicians and Abortion Funding, 8/30) that we should be steadfastly opposed to abortion. I am appalled at the widespread practice of abortion in the United States, but I find Grisez’s arguments, like those of many church officials, abstract…
Editorials
The Catholic Mind
In a famous essay published in Thought in 1955, Msgr. John Tracy Ellis lamented the lack of intellectual achievement on the part of second- and third-generation American Catholics. Conditions have changed markedly since Ellis wrote. Today Catholics can be found on the faculties of the best American
Faith in Focus
Wise, Healthy and, Yes, Wealthy
Money is a subject that has always held endless difficulty and fascination for me. At 20 I entered a convent, embracing a sacred vow of poverty and refusing to have anything to do with owning money. At 38, I left that order and had to face financial reality again. I worked in the service of…
Books
Fervent Servant
Now that the recent flood of books about the quest of the historical Jesus has subsided somewhat it seems inevitable that New Testament scholars should turn to the quest of the historical Paul Two new books about Paul represent serious attempts to write a scholarly biography of Paul and place his
The Great Western Upheaval
ldquo In its field it is the best book ever written rdquo That was the most enthusiastic of the many enthusiastic assessments that greeted MacCulloch rsquo s book when it appeared in Britain last year It is an assessment with which I agree The book is a monumental achievement that takes readers
Through Nature and Spirituality
Diamonds and dross compete in this book all for a good cause The diamonds the sparkling poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins along with some less known but splendid prose The dross the preface introductions and commentary which are inaccurate overreaching and based on outmoded sources The good c
The Word
God, Am I Good!
We probably all have long lists of things we would never do I would never rob a bank or attack a helpless person or run off with the pool man It is beneath my dignity to cheat on a test or purchase clothing I intend to wear only once and then return for refund God…
Columns
Immoral Bingeing
What do you call a politician who supports incentives to buy and drive fuel-efficient vehicles, even if they happen to be made in Japan? One can easily imagine Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California curling his lips and referring to such a goody-goody colleague as, well, a girlie man. Schwarze
News
Signs of the Times
Vatican Tells U.N. War Did Not Make World SaferAddressing the United Nations, a leading Vatican official said the war in Iraq did not make the world safer and that defeating terrorism will require multilateral cooperation that goes beyond short-term military operations. Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, t
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Culture
Vatican
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Podcasts