Of Many Things
With great spirit and generosity: A reflection on Jesuit tertianship
Sam Sawyer, S.J., returns from his tertianship in South Africa to his role as editor in chief.
Your Take
Our readers respond: Can the Catholic Church Change the world?
In her feature, Cecilia González-Andrieau explores the potential of the Catholic Church. The article elicited numerous responses from our readers.
Editorials
Catholics cannot see immigrants as political pawns
The United States needs to repent and believe. Until then, there will be no justice for immigrants, neither here nor in their home countries.
Short Take
Bishop Barron fears that Catholicism has been ‘dumbed down.’ But has it also been opened up?
Bishop Barron may be correct that the church has become intellectually weaker, but the way to truth is to continue inviting the voices of those who have been marginalized in the past.
Dispatches
The evangelization of welcome: What the church can learn from a youth center in a poor Dominican neighborhood
The children and teens of Quitasueños can also take recreational classes, like hip-hop, dance and drama; and the center organizes summer camps in the mountains. Oh, and one more thing. The young people learn about God.
Despite threats and government harassment, 11 Jesuits remain in Nicaragua
Those Jesuits who remain, he said, now face the “fundamental concern” of expulsion or detention if relations between the Society of Jesus and the government of former Sandinista comandante President Daniel Ortega and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, grow any worse.
Pope Francis speaks out against his critics in the U.S. Catholic Church
Pope Francis commented that the situation in the Catholic Church in the United States is “not easy,” where “there is a very strong reactionary attitude” that “is organized and shapes the way people belong, even emotionally.”
Ecuador bishops: A ‘yes’ vote for the environment answers ‘the call of Pope Francis’
The church, while not taking sides in the political contests, went all in on the referendums to stop drilling on oil Block 43 inside the Yasuní and to end mining in the Chocó Andino, a highland biosphere near the capital.
Features
What ISIS couldn’t take: The place and faith Iraq’s Christian refugees carried with them
The story of how one Iraqi refugee preserved the memory of home through her art.
The complicated legacy of state investigations of the Catholic sex abuse crisis
Parsing the numbers and understanding the implications can be challenging. Are we learning anything new?
Faith and Reason
What the U.S. Catholic Church can learn from the synod about racial justice
Preparations for the upcoming Synod have prompted an important question: How might the local church of the United States become a powerful witness of the good news amid cries for racial healing and justice?
Faith in Focus
Remembering the man who helped young people in the South Bronx find strength in community
Dr. Edward Eismann structured Unitas around surrogate families—groups of teens and younger children assigned to care for each other in cascading mentorship that also supported birth families. As they spoke at the funeral home, those who had grown up in Unitas testified to its profound influence in their life.
Following St. Francis: Lessons from studying the saint’s closest friends
In times of reflection, when Francis of Assisi asked himself what would be the most important qualities for his followers to have, he would focus on one or another of the brothers who were already by his side. I, too, have a list of virtues that I prize. Mine, however, is a list of what…
Books
In the belly of the beast: Daniel Kraus’s novel ‘Whalefall’ considers the power of communion and grief
Sucked into the belly of an 80-foot sperm whale, scuba diver Jay Gardiner reconciles the loss of his father and challenges the power of the creatures of the sea in Daniel Kraus’s novel ‘Whalefall.’
Review: Daniel Hornsby’s new novel seeks meaning in a world gone mad
Daniel Hornsby’s new page-turning novel ‘Sucker’ is consistently funny, a sobering screengrab of our wealth- and power-obsessed nation.
Review: How can we fix our hospitals?
In his debut book, ‘The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine,’ Ricardo Nuila presents the conflict between the profit motive of health care and the art of medicine by describing the hospitals that work for people and the hospitals that do not.
Review: The shameful history of when the Jesuits sold enslaved people
In ‘The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church,’ Rachel Swarns tells of “one of the largest documented slave sales in the nation,” the Jesuit sale of 272 enslaved persons in 1838.
Three new books expose the shameful history of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries
In recent years, several books have attempted to piece together what really happened behind the doors of power in Ireland’s Magdalene laundries, including Emer Martin’s novel ‘The Cruelty Men,’ Claire Keegan’s novella ‘Small Things Like These,’ and new collection of essays, ‘A Dublin Magdalene Laundry: Donnybrook and Church-State Power in Ireland,’ edited by Mark Coen,…
Review: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theological vision of the Eucharist, heaven and a Christ-centered anthropology
Jonathan Ciraulo claims that “Balthasar’s theology as a whole is concerned, one could say consumed, with making the Eucharist the linchpin for all speculative dogmatics.” It is worth considering the ramifications of this view in four crucial areas of theology: Christology, theological anthropology, Trinitarian theology and eschatology.
Poetry
Little Brother
My brother, when did rage become your station?
Sabbath
Jesus says, Woe to your puritan work ethics.
‘She was startled by what the angel said and tried to figure out what this greeting meant’
And therefore, all the more believable, That God sent a tiny angel with a chinstrap made of feathered jewels,
Last Take
Cardinal Dolan: The Catholic Church has too many seminaries.
To provide quality formation—human, academic, spiritual and pastoral—to our future priests is a sacred duty. We would be able to do this better if we had fewer seminaries, all of them excellent ones.
Faith
Remembering the man who helped young people in the South Bronx find strength in community
Dr. Edward Eismann structured Unitas around surrogate families—groups of teens and younger children assigned to care for each other in cascading mentorship that also supported birth families. As they spoke at the funeral home, those who had grown up in Unitas testified to its profound influence in their life.
Following St. Francis: Lessons from studying the saint’s closest friends
In times of reflection, when Francis of Assisi asked himself what would be the most important qualities for his followers to have, he would focus on one or another of the brothers who were already by his side. I, too, have a list of virtues that I prize. Mine, however, is a list of what…
What the U.S. Catholic Church can learn from the synod about racial justice
Preparations for the upcoming Synod have prompted an important question: How might the local church of the United States become a powerful witness of the good news amid cries for racial healing and justice?
What ISIS couldn’t take: The place and faith Iraq’s Christian refugees carried with them
The story of how one Iraqi refugee preserved the memory of home through her art.
With great spirit and generosity: A reflection on Jesuit tertianship
Sam Sawyer, S.J., returns from his tertianship in South Africa to his role as editor in chief.
Our readers respond: Can the Catholic Church Change the world?
In her feature, Cecilia González-Andrieau explores the potential of the Catholic Church. The article elicited numerous responses from our readers.
Cardinal Dolan: The Catholic Church has too many seminaries.
To provide quality formation—human, academic, spiritual and pastoral—to our future priests is a sacred duty. We would be able to do this better if we had fewer seminaries, all of them excellent ones.
Pope Francis speaks out against his critics in the U.S. Catholic Church
Pope Francis commented that the situation in the Catholic Church in the United States is “not easy,” where “there is a very strong reactionary attitude” that “is organized and shapes the way people belong, even emotionally.”
Bishop Barron fears that Catholicism has been ‘dumbed down.’ But has it also been opened up?
Bishop Barron may be correct that the church has become intellectually weaker, but the way to truth is to continue inviting the voices of those who have been marginalized in the past.
The complicated legacy of state investigations of the Catholic sex abuse crisis
Parsing the numbers and understanding the implications can be challenging. Are we learning anything new?
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts