Signs of That Peace: Peacemaking is everybody’s business
For decades now, popes and episcopal conferences have been insisting that to work for peace is the vocation of all Christians. Too often, however, peacemaking seems the domain of special vocations or technical specialists. This is certainly not the church’s hope. As Pope John Paul II proclaime
Solid Foundations: Grounding social justice in our common humanity
In March 2010, I traveled to Bagaces, Costa Rica, for a weeklong service project with a dozen college students and a colleague. Volunteer programs, service learning and weeklong service trips are now commonplace on American college campuses. These programs offer students powerful opportunities to en
Becoming Human: The Incarnation calls us to a new life.
How to choose from the bountiful treasury of images awaiting our contemplation (and sheer delight) in this darkening season before Christmas? Do you prefer Netherlandish precision and detail? Italian tenderness and warmth? The classical proportions and palette of Poussin? The transcendent simplicity
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
The Christmas season is a time for thanks, so on behalf of all of us at America: Thank you.
Letters
Reply All
Not A Choice“The Loneliest Choice” (12/1), by the Rev. Rhonda Mawhood Lee, disappointed me greatly. While pastoral reflection on suicide remains a crucial topic, the article seems to hark back to pre-Enlightenment days, when there was little understanding of grave mental illness. Fo
Editorials
Crossing Borders
In some sense the Christmas story is one of borders. The Gospel of Luke tells us that the Holy Family’s journey begins with a population divided, a census of “the whole world…each to his own town” (2:1-3). And, in the Gospel of Matthew, Mary and Joseph travel to Bethlehem, then f
Faith in Focus
Faith Amid Flowers: Finding grace and new growth at Christmas
Finding grace and new growth at Christmas
Books
Where is Thy Sting?
‘Musings on Mortality,’ by Victor Brombert
Majority Rules
‘Goliath,’ by Max Blumenthal
A ‘Catholic’ Justice?
‘Scalia,’ by Bruce Allen Murphy
Film
Hopeful Wanderers: The spiritual journeys in ‘Wild’ and ‘Exodus’
The spiritual journeys in ‘Wild’ and ‘Exodus’
The Word
Journey of Hope
A summer ago my family set off on a cross-country car trip from Minnesota to Vancouver B C in part to pick up a wooden bench that my great-grandfather had made when my family immigrated to Canada It was the first thing he built when he arrived As an old man he was too old…
Children of Hope
The truth of the supposedly clich d phrase ldquo every child is a miracle rdquo hits home for most people when a child is born to them or an adopted child is welcomed into the family The instantaneous recognition of the child never before seen is a spiritual experience made tactile as a mother t
Columns
A More Perfect Union
Complementarity must begin with an understanding of the radical equality of men and women.
Current Comment
Current Comment
New law provides additional oversight and training for federal child care program.
Philosopher's Notebook
Has Natural Law Died?
The recent Synod on the Family had its surface controversies: the admission of the divorced and remarried to the sacraments and the pastoral care of homosexuals. It also had its background theoretical controversies. The Vatican’s Humanum conference in November probed one of them: the complemen
Signs Of the Times
Pope Remains ‘Not Afraid’
Immediately after his election on March 13, 2013, Pope Francis told himself, “Jorge, do not change, continue being yourself because to change at your age would be ridiculous.” He revealed this interesting personal detail in a wide-ranging exclusive multi-part interview with Elisabetta Pi
News Briefs
Citing a lack of funding, the World Food Program announced on Dec. 1 that it was suspending food vouchers for more than 1.7 million Syrian refugees, a move its president called “disastrous for many already suffering families.” • The final report of a Vatican-ordered study of co
After Ferguson, Learning to Listen
The shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., exposed long-ignored, long-simmering tensions in the United States. Ferguson amounts to a kind of national Rorschach test on race. Polls show blacks and whites hold decidedly different views about the unarmed teenager’s death.
In Search of Unity
In Istanbul on Nov. 30, Pope Francis stated unequivocally that “full communion” was his goal with the 300-million-member Orthodox churches. He added that the only condition for achieving that unity is “the shared profession of faith.” Significantly, seeking to overcome suspic
Christian, Muslim Leaders Promote Peace
Catholic, Anglican, Sunni and Shiite leaders vowed to do all they can to combat “ugly and hideous” distortions of religion and to involve more women—often the first victims of violence—in official interreligious dialogues. Holding the third Christian-Muslim Summit in Rome on
End to Slavery?
History was made in the Vatican on Dec. 2, when Pope Francis and other leaders of the world’s main religions—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Judaism—signed a joint declaration to work together to eradicate modern slavery in its various forms by the year 2020. Pope Franc
From Deterrence to Abolition; Vatican Revises Stance on Weapons
The Catholic Church seemed to throw its support behind what is, in Europe at least, an accelerating movement toward the abolition of nuclear weapons during the first day, Dec. 8, of the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.In a message to the conference participants from P
Vatican Dispatch
Rome in Review
What an extraordinary year this has been for the Catholic Church under the leadership of Pope Francis, who continues to inspire and reach the hearts of people far beyond its boundaries!In this last Vatican Dispatch of the year, I will briefly review what the Argentine pope has done to change the chu
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