The Health Care Crisis
Four years ago, after the newly elected President George W. Bush’s inaugural address, 40 million people were without health care coverage in our nation. At that time, the Catholic Health Association of the United States called for a series of reforms and a sharing of responsibility for health
A Personal Advent Mystery
I sit at lessons and carols for the second time, listening to St. Luke’s account of the Annunciation while a baby kicks and swims inside me. The church is candlelit and hushed, fragrant with pine boughs, nothing like the small, hot room where a Middle Eastern Jewish teenager learned from an an
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
Delivering a hot meal to an elderly woman in a public housing project is how my Saturday afternoons begin. Her meal and hundreds of others are prepared in the basement of a Manhattan church. Most are eaten right there, but enough are set aside to accommodate shut-ins as part of a program informally
Letters
Letters
Welcome Advance
Brian D. Scanlan’s forthright account (11/1) of wholesome boyhood experiences in the company of an aging priest was a welcome relief from the depressing lore we have painfully endured regarding boy-priest relationships these past years. His memories do not clamor for healing. Yet his otherwise laudable essay betrays an angst, I fear, that is…
Editorials
A Second Chance
Out today, back behind bars tomorrow: high rates of recidivism remain one of the most troubling aspects of our criminal justice system. Referring to released prisoners, President George W. Bush noted in his State of the Union speech in 2004 that we know from long experience that if they can’t
Faith in Focus
Not Alone in Death
I prayed over a dead man today. His name was Jocelyn, and he had only one leg. His other leg had been amputated “not too long ago due to complications from sugar,” said the man in the adjacent bed. That man’s legs had both been amputated at the knees. I guessed Jocelyn had been in
Books
Five Views of Nazism
Robert Krieg professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame is the author of several studies of 20th-century German Catholic theologians In the work under review he examines the widely varying stances taken toward Nazism by selected Catholic theologians in Hitler rsquo s Germany His seco
Lady in Lights
A pioneering 20th-century stage and opera director Margaret Webster challenged not only stage tradition but also mainstream attitudes toward professional women A creative force in the United States and Great Britain Webster is credited with bringing Shakespeare to Broadway Her bold casting of Pau
Medieval Myth?
A man stands in a cave Before him glitters an array of beautiful objects some dishes or platters but mostly cups All are enticing but only one is the object he seeks He reaches out and grasps the plainest of all That rsquo s the cup of a carpenter he avers Has he chosen correctly…
The Word
What’s In a Name?
The Advent hymn ldquo O Come O Come Emmanuel rdquo is a song of longing and profound faith But who is Emmanuel Today rsquo s Gospel tells us that the word Emmanuel means ldquo with us is God rdquo and it implies that the child born of Mary is this Emmanuel But what of the…
Do You Hear What I Hear?
At Christmastide we hear sounds and voices that seem to be silent the rest of the year We hear lighthearted jingling bells that delight us We sing beloved carols that express messages simple enough for children to understand yet profound enough to challenge us for the rest of our lives We exchan
Columns
A Politician Awakened
In the aftermath of John Kerry’s electoral defeat, Democrats have begun a conversation among themselves about the importance of being able to speak to, for lack of a better term, voters of faith. The Democrats, everybody seems to agree, just cannot manage to connect with Americans, particularl
News
Signs of the Times
Ukrainian Catholic Leaders Back Opposition, Speak of Electoral FraudUkrainian Catholic leaders backed opposition protests and said the presidential elections on Nov. 21 were marked by fraud. They also urged the government to avoid violence as hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets o
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts