Higher Standards
Five years ago last October, the superior general of the Jesuits, Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, delivered a historic address at Santa Clara University in California, urging that the promotion of justice should have a central place in Jesuit higher education. Father Kolvenbach was not simply innovating. Ten
Aquinas in Africa
Recently I taught theology in South Africa, at St. Joseph’s Theological Institute in Pietermaritzburg. Hot and humid in late summer, 50 miles from the Indian Ocean, Pietermaritzburg in the state of KwaZulu-Natal is the city where in 1893 Gandhi was thrown off a train because he was not white,
Shiite Muslims – The Party of Aly
Since the beginning of the war in Iraq on March 20, 2003, Americans have encountered Shiite Islam in the media more frequently than at any time since the taking of the hostages in Tehran, when the American Embassy in Iran was occupied on Nov. 4, 1979, and Americans were held hostage for 444 days. As
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
Until the appearance on Jan. 25 of Pope Benedict’s XVI’s first encyclical, Deus Est Caritas, observers had been searching with little success for hints of the new pope’s mind. Some conservatives have felt particularly stymied by the lack of red-meat decrees and denunciations. Wary
Letters
Letters
Imperial Presence
I write to commend the effort of Peter J. Donaldson (A Century Behind, 1/16) to present the situation of poverty and illiteracy in Burkina Faso, the former Upper Volta. His account gives urgency to the concerted effort to make poverty history in Africa. Africans are grateful for such efforts undertaken to alleviate their travails.…
Editorials
Immigration Reform
Immigration issues continue to roil the waters of Congress, with the president himself caught in their turbulence. Mr. Bush traveled to the Southwest in November to promote again his plan for a guest worker program. This time, however, his reform proposal contains some harsh elements intended to soo
Books
God in the World
Many consider Karl Rahner one of the greatest Catholic theologians of the past century Indeed he has been deemed a contemporary father of the church Now Rahner has the honor of a volume in the prestigious Cambridge Companion series The Rahner volume has been edited most capably by Declan Marmion
Film
Mixed Doubles: Match Point
My presence at a midday meeting a few weeks ago was not essential. Surely, other demands on my time were more pressing, but for some strange reason as the campus carillon struck noon, even though I’d be a few minutes late, for some inexplicable reason, I decided to put in an appearance. I open
The Word
Uniters, Not Dividers
It is no secret that today there are deep divisions in our society and in our churches This Sunday rsquo s Scripture readings remind us that there were deep social and religious divisions in the Judaism of Jesus rsquo day as well and in the Christian communities founded by Paul They also remind u
Columns
You Can Make This Up
Just after Christmas, and just before James Frey became the most discussed writer of fiction in American letters today, I was playing a Harry Potter board game with my kids. Now, I know very little about Harry and his friends, which is my loss. But playing along at least allowed the kids to believe
Culture
A Papacy of Dialogue?
Visiting Rome in early 1959, while still an Anglican priest, I asked a learned Benedictine from Belgium who was prior of the monastery where I was staying, whether he had attended the funeral of Pope Pius XII six months earlier. His reply, an apt comment on the style of papal liturgies of that era:
News
Signs of the Times
Pope Calls for Deeper Understanding of LoveIn his first encyclical, Pope Benedict XVI called for a deeper understanding of love as a gift from God to be shared in a self-sacrificial way, at both a personal and a social level.The pope said "love between couples, often reduced today to selfish se
Politics
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Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts