Flannery O’Connor’s Religious Vision
Flannery O’Connor died during the Second Vatican Council, while the bishops were writing anew what she had always known: that the church is the body of Christ, the people of God; that laypeople are its flesh and blood; and that the clergy and religious orders are its servant-leaders. While O&#
Christ and Secular Sweden: An interview with Klaus Dietz about the Swedish church
Sweden has a population of nine million, of whom approximately 150,000 are Catholic. , a German who is one of 17 Jesuits working there, has been serving in parish ministry in Sweden for 37 years. , an associate editor of America, spoke to Father Dietz recently about Christianity and secularization i
Candidate Index Details
Unless otherwise noted, information is from surveys filled out by the candidates, at www.vote-smart.org. • Total Number of Candidate Marriages: Giuliani and Kucinich have each been divorced twice, married three times; Gravel, Dodd, McCain and Thompson have each been divorced once, married twi
America Essay Contest: Making the case for God
Making the case for God
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
It poured rain the entire day that Christmas in Georgia, but we never let it dampen our spirits. I was visiting close neighbors, Sam and Beth and their young son. The three of us had prepared a vegetarian feast of succulent grain dishes, vegetable medleys, fruits, nuts, goat cheese and breads, not t
Letters
Letters
Fatal Love In the Signs of the Times story about Franz Jägerstätter (11/12), the author writes, Blessed Jägerstätter was beatified as a martyr, which means he was killed out of hatred for the faith. In other words, someones hate got Franz into heaven. But such is decidedly not the case. It is in
Editorials
The First Visitors
It is sometimes hard to believe that dirty-faced shepherds were Jesus' first royal retinue.
Faith in Focus
Newborn: The fifth in a series for Advent and Christmas
How overwhelming the first Christmas must have been for Mary and Joseph.
Two Surprise Guests
The social worker and I belonged to the same parish, but we were merely acquaintances. So I was surprised when she called to ask whether anyone at our farm might be willing to take in a mother who had given birth during the night. There were perhaps 50 committed adults living at Koinonia Partners In
Brother Lawrence and the Chimney Bird
As I laid my cellphone on a bookshelf near the door and stepped outside into the late winter afternoon, I remember thinking, What can happen in just 30 minutes? True, my wife’s due date for our first child was just a few weeks away. It’s also true this fact made me quiver on occasion li
Words That Make Music
The Foley Poetry contest approaches, with entries accepted between Jan. 1 and March 31. I know how the outpouring of poems will eventually seem like what Robert Frost describes in After Apple Pickingthe rumbling sound of load on load of apples coming in. (The picker admits he is overtired of the great harvest I myself…
Books
Its Confusing Out There
Over the past five decades liberation theologians have stressed the notion of Christian practice or praxis Greek for doing that is the notion that being a disciple of Jesus Christ requires action that is congruent with the Gospel discloses its truth and transforms society According to Gustavo
Miracles and Mystery
Lourdes at 150: a pilgrims' guide, reviewed
I Think, Therefore…
In Lost in the Cosmos Walker Percy recounts an incident when the great neuroscientist Sir John Eccles was greeted by boos and hisses at a Harvard lecture Eccles had committed the unpardonable sin of claiming that human self-consciousness was not reducible to the biochemistry of the brain The host
Film
His Dark Materials, Indeed: Is ‘The Golden Compass’ anti-Catholic?
‘The Golden Compass,’ reviewed
Poetry
Mantra for a Dark December Night
At the interstices between the word & silence
The Word
Family Values
On Christmas Day we celebrated the birth of Jesus the Word of God as a human being He entered our world as part of a family so it has become customary to focus on the Holy Family on the Sunday after Christmas That there is a crisis in the modern family is hardly news One…
Not Just Exotic Visitors
The term epiphany means a showing forth or manifestation In the context of the Christmas season it refers to the showing forth of the infant Jesus to a group known as the Magi The story of the Epiphany in Matthew 2 describes how these exotic visitors from far away come in search of the newborn…
Columns
In Defense of Human Life 2: ‘The Iraq war is largely about oil.’ –Alan Greenspan
In my previous column (11/26), I recommended Francis Beckwiths book Defending Life for serious arguments in defense of human life at its earliest stage. Another powerful defense, more accessible and less technical, is forthcoming in Embryo, by Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen, to be publis
Current Comment
Current Comment
Killing the Death Penalty
The U.N. General Assembly is expected to call for a worldwide moratorium on executions in a plenary session this month. Although it will not bind individual countries, abolitionists see the resolution as carrying moral and political weight. They also believe it will encourage nations that still use the death penalty to…
News
Signs of the Times
Bishops Warn: Book Could Mislead Faithful A Vietnamese-American theologian’s 2004 book on religious pluralism contains “pervading ambiguities and equivocations that could easily confuse or mislead the faithful,” the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Doctrine said in a Dec. 10 statem
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