Unsung Miracles: Catholic Charities fights poverty ‘one family at a time.’
A young man whose brother was killed on the streets of Paterson turned up days later at the Father English Community Center with a simple request. Poor and marginally employed, he needed a suit, shirt and tie to wear to his brother’s funeral. Carlos Roldan, who oversees the clothes closet, foo
Liturgy on the Hours: So many Masses, so little time
For parish priests, how many Masses is too many?
Everyone’s Vocation: Calling for an end to lay clericalism
In The Edge of Sadness, the elegiac successor to his wildly successful novel The Last Hurrah, Edwin O’Connor places these words about the priesthood and lay clericalism in the mouth of the story’s priest-narrator: “Probably in no other walk of life is a young man so often and so hu
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
Faith cannot be separated from doubt any more than Easter Sunday from Good Friday.
Faith in Focus
Prison Possibilities: Hearing victims’ voices in a moment of silence
I was seated at the back of the room as 60 or so inmates gathered for the weekly Tuesday night meeting of Criminals and Gangmembers Anonymous. Most of the members are serving life sentences, many with the distant possibility of parole, although a few are LWOPs, which stands for lifers without that p
Books
Building An ‘Ethnocracy’
‘Contested Land, Contested Memory,’ by Jo Roberts
A President’s Faith
‘Redeemer: the Life of Jimmy Carter,’ by Randall Balmer, and ‘A Call to Action,’ by Jimmy Carter
What Makes a Martyr?
‘The Death and Afterlife of the North American Martyrs,’ by Emma Anderson
Film
The Final Act: Sad, solemn lessons from ‘Last Days in Vietnam’
Rory Kennedy’s ‘Last Days in Vietnam’
The Word
The Vineyard Grows
In biblical poetry a vineyard often represents the beloved. The prophet Isaiah begins to “sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard,” a song in which God’s affectionate care of Israel is recounted. The love song quickly becomes a lover’s lament, though, as Isaiah tells how the vineyard was prepared with tenderness, but since…
Current Comment
Current Comment
It is not yet November, but voting in this year’s midterm elections is well underway.
Faith
The Vineyard Grows
In biblical poetry a vineyard often represents the beloved. The prophet Isaiah begins to “sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard,” a song in which God’s affectionate care of Israel is recounted. The love song quickly becomes a lover’s lament, though, as Isaiah tells how the vineyard was prepared with tenderness, but since…
Go and Do Likewise: Lessons from the parable of the Good Samaritan
Amy Jill-Levine on the lessons of the Good Samaritan
Of Other Things
The Tangled Web
The Internet seems designed to make the job of modern e-parenting virtually impossible.
Reply All
Signs Of the Times
Landing in Sicily
At least 124,000 migrants entered Italy in the first eight months of this year, more than twice the 60,000 who arrived in all of 2013. The vast majority landed first in Sicily. Seeing to the new arrivals’ immediate needs in Sicily’s multiple port cities is now a joint effort between chur
A Crackdown on Christianity
Authorities plan to promulgate an official version of Chinese Christian theology.
U.S. Bishops Visit East Jerusalem
U.S. bishops visiting the Holy Land on Sept. 11 said an on-the-ground tour about the situation in East Jerusalem heightened their awareness of the settlement issue in the divided city. “The expansion of settlements is quickly driving [the possibility of a two-state solution] off the drawing bo
Ending Slavery In Our Time
In an address at the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Sept. 11, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See’s permanent observer at the United Nations, described the tragic forms of contemporary slavery, such as “massive kidnappings and sale of young girls under the false premises of religi
Back to Iraq: Is White House Preparing To Repeat Past Mistakes?
Listening to President Obama’s speech on Sept. 10, outlining his administration’s purportedly new strategy for defeating Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, David Cortright found himself wondering what, if anything the United States has learned from its long and costly involvement
Executive Inaction on Reform
President Obama’s decision to delay executive measures on immigration until after the November elections drew sharp rebukes from some of the most vocal advocates for immigrants, while others continued to urge specific actions toward reform and analysts weighed whether the delay hurts or helps
The Living Word
Go and Do Likewise: Lessons from the parable of the Good Samaritan
Amy Jill-Levine on the lessons of the Good Samaritan
Vatican Dispatch
Bit by Bit, A World at War
Pope Francis wants to stop the downward spiral of inhumanity, and believes the media can play an important role.
Washington Front
Finding Hope in a ‘Messy’ World
President Obama recently said, “If you watch the nightly news, it feels like the world is falling apart…. The world’s always been messy. We’re just noticing now in part because of social media.” Excuse me, but the problem is not increased awareness. The world is broken
Politics
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Culture
Vatican
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Podcasts