Bishops on Citizenship: The draft document emphasizes formation of conscience.
Aided by the moral teaching of the church, U.S. Catholics should carefully form their consciences in order to participate in public life, according to a draft document on faith and citizenship prepared by the Administrative Committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and made available to A
A Struggle for the Soul of Medicine: Can physicians be trained to care?
At most medical schools in the United States, students are given a white coat during a ceremony in the first weeks after matriculation, and they are told about the role they will play and their obligation to serve others. These days medical training, both at the undergraduate and postgraduate (resid
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
Praying with the Quakers in Plymouth Meeting, Pa.
Letters
Letters
Financial Priorities In It Starts in Mexico (10/15), Tim Padgetts apology to his fellow Catholics for criticizing poor Mexicans choice to build ostentatious churches with their remittance monies is a nice touch, especially when such profligacy is equated with purchasing flashy trucks and wide-screen
Editorials
Torture and the C.I.A.
The Bush administration's denial of engaging in torture must be exposed.
Faith in Focus
Faith & American Politics: A commentary on ‘Faithful Citizenship’
During the 2004 election campaigns, the U.S. bishops’ statement on political responsibility, Faithful Citizenship, came in for considerable criticism among a vocal segment of conservative Catholics. They believed that the document diluted the pro-life message of the church by not emphasizing i
Eco-Asceticism: Preparing for the future through discipline today
In the middle of a muggy summer in southern Indiana, with daytime temperatures near or over 100 degrees, it is hot on our little organic vegetable farm in the Ohio River valley. And although we have central air conditioning in our home, this summer we decided not to turn it on. Why has my family…
Illness, Here Is Thy Sting: A review of ‘Sicko’
Larry and Donna Smith had it good. He worked as an engineer, she as a newspaper editor. They had a happy family and their health—the middle-class American dream. Then Donna was diagnosed with cancer; and Larry had a heart attack, and then another, and another. And the real nightmare began. Alt
Books
Ministering to Two Worlds
'Mexican-American Catholics,' reviewed
Models to Suit Many
‘The Great Catholic Reformers,’ reviewed
How Much Storytelling?
The 8220 Christmas story 8221 that we re-enact annually is based for the most part on the infancy narratives found in the first two chapters of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke Those texts combine historical details fulfillments of Old Testament prophecies and theological affirmations about Jes
Images and Mirages
Margaret Atwood has published over a dozen volumes of poetry While she might be more widely known as a novelist it is in her poetry that the issues dealt with in her novels are first tried out and sharpened The Door provides a foundation for many of the themes symbols and conflicts that erupt in
The God of My Universe
Astronomers love to wander in the dark because it is often the darkest skies that radiate the brightest stars An award-winning astronomer and the Priest Professor of Physics at St Lawrence University in Canton N Y Aileen O 8217 Donoghue has spent years searching the heavens of the physical uni
The Word
Resurrection and the Communion of Saints
In the northern hemisphere November is traditionally associated with those who have died The flowers have wilted the leaves are dropping and the grass has ceased to grow The freshness of spring and the warmth of summer are distant memories Yet amid these signs of death there is the expectation
Columns
Treasures of Darkness: ‘The poverty of a wintering earth contains secret riches.’
One of the happier aspects of the fall season in the northern hemisphere is the sudden urge we get to plant bulbs. Having just moved into a new home, with a tiny garden that is bravely trying to survive on a layer of builders’ rubble, I have to admit that this urge was accompanied by…
Current Comment
Current Comment
More Light Than Heat The public forum on the Iraq war sponsored by The New Yorker magazine on Oct. 5 at Manhattan’s Town Hall theater was first-rate. Credit goes to moderator George Packer (author of Assassin’s Gate) and to the participants: Jon Lee Anderson (Fall of Baghdad); Phebe Marr
News
Signs of the Times
Indian-American Convert Elected Governor Bobby Jindal, Louisiana’s Republican governor-elect, will not only be the nation’s youngest governor when he is sworn into office in January. He will be the first Indian-American governor and the first who is a convert from Hinduism to Catholicism
Politics
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Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts