Mission Trail: A journey through California’s Catholic past
My wife and I were standing in the courtyard of Mission San Juan Bautista, but my mind was on Rome. It was early March 2013. Pope Benedict XVI had just resigned, and Pope Francis had yet to be elected. For two weeks, Rome seemed to be the center of the universe. The Year of Faith…
Sacred Silence: Lessons from the high desert plains
I was 32 when I made my first trip into the high desert plains of northern New Mexico, known to many as the landscape that inspired artist Georgia O’Keeffe, and to a few as the home of the Taos Pueblo Indians. About an hour’s drive from Taos and 20 minutes more up the state highway…
Separation Anxiety: What happens when we disassociate love and sex?
In her article in The New York Times, “Sex on Campus: She Can Play That Game, Too,” Kate Taylor describes a world of ambitious Penn undergraduates who put their personal interests and their résumés first. Many have chosen to avoid romantic relationships during college entirely in favor
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
Justin Bieber has gone from idol to tragic and familiar cliché in less than a year.
Letters
Reply All
Who Is Incoherent?Re “A.C.L.U. v. U.S.C.C.B.” (Current Comment, 1/20): The editors dismiss the A.C.L.U. lawsuit but ignore the facts alleged in the complaint. The plaintiff’s case was allegedly one of at least five cases in that hospital system, discovered by a public health educat
Editorials
Our Digital Future
The Web reflects human nature in surprising and scary ways.
Faith in Focus
Anchored in Faith: Serving God at sea
About 10 years ago a fellow Jesuit put me in touch with the person in charge of booking all the entertainers for one of the major cruise lines. Her job includes managing the singers, the dancers, the jugglers, the magicians—and the priests. While I had long admired the large cruise ships float
Walk On: Navigating expat life in Nairobi
While walking home from a nearby shopping mall in Nairobi one evening, I was assaulted and robbed at gunpoint. Most of my friends, family and colleagues responded along two somewhat predictable and justified lines: 1) “Why were you walking in the evening? It’s dangerous—stop walkin
Books
The Restless Moralist
Many people claim that baseball is the ldquo thinking person rsquo s sport rdquo but I now believe that claim rightly applies only to spectators After reading Daniel Callahan rsquo s most recent two books one a memoir and the other a collection of essays spanning almost three decades of his ca
How We Fight
Americans support United States interventions abroad ldquo only so long as someone else rsquo s kid does the fighting and future generations get stuck with the bill rdquo So concludes Andrew J Bacevich in this passionate new book about military policy in the post-Vietnam era Bacevich has excelle
Film
Blow the House Down: The big, bad ‘Wolf of Wall Street’
Jim McDermott, S.J., reviews the big, bad “Wolf of Wall Street,” up for five Oscars at this Sunday’s Academy Awards.
Poetry
The Crocodile
This ruse, enduring for days,will eventually cease, but noweven the birds mistake him for a log,or a stone the fleeting droughthas lifted above the current.Because there is a current, even in this cocoa-dark side-pool, and the solution to hidingso plainly under the sun is to glide asthe magnoli
The Word
My Enemy, My Love
In the movies a persecuted protagonist can exact revenge on the evil antagonist and the theater audience cheers Movie heroes and heroines have limitless scope to exact vengeance on the villains because ldquo they have it coming rdquo Moral considerations melt away in the shared reverie of perso
Columns
That He May Be One
“So, are you writing about the Jesus of history or the Christ of faith?” Why not both?
Current Comment
Current Comment
The devastating chemical spill in West Virginia shows need for greater oversight.
Of Other Things
God’s Playbook
It is important for believers to step back and critically reflect on our practices as fans.
Signs Of the Times
Little to Praise in House Farm Bill
The House finally passed a five-year farm bill on Jan. 29, more than a year after the previous agriculture program expired and two days before a stopgap extension was itself set to expire. While Catholic groups and other rural advocates had been urging passage of a farm bill, their enthusiasm for th
Child Migrants
Number of unaccompanied minors apprehended at U.S. border doubled last year.
News Briefs
The global pope-apalooza continued in January as Pope Francis was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine and in “superpope” graffiti that sprouted up on buildings around Vatican City. • It was announced on Jan. 27 that Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Melkite Ar
Visitation Report ‘Soon’
The Vatican Congregation for Religious hopes to release its final report on the 2009-10 visitation of U.S. women’s communities “soon.” Speaking to reporters on Jan. 31 at the Vatican, Archbishop José Rodríguez Carballo, O.F.M., secretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Cons
‘Encouraged’ on Immigration Reform
House Republicans released a one-page set of “standards for immigration reform” during their annual retreat in Cambridge, Md., on Jan. 29. Bishop Eusebio Elizondo, M.Sp.S., auxiliary bishop of Seattle and chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration,
Too Many Workers, Too Few Jobs; World Youth Are Hardest Hit
The U.N.’s International Labor Organization in January offered a sobering review of global labor conditions and projections for the future that were not much more heartening. According to I.L.O. researchers, almost 202 million people around the world were unemployed during 2013, an increase of
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts