Spending three decades as a married couple in the same difficult apostolate—prison reform—represents no small achievement. Charlie and Pauline Sullivan are co-founders of CURE, a grassroots organization that is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year (www.curenational.org). My first e

The fundamental imperatives of the Christian vocation are two in number: love God with all your heart and mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. The twofold commandment involves loving in three distinct directions: love of God, love of neighbor and love of self. Any Christian spiritu

Here’s a question about the shows that have debuted during the past few weeks: What’s with all the cop/detective/law/forensics shows these days? C.S.I., C.S.I. Miami, Law and Order, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Crossing Jordan, Judging Amy, N.Y.P.D

Just after I leave the church and step into the sparkling sunlight on the way to my car, a woman I hadn’t noticed before comes up to me. A recent widow, she speaks, at first hesitantly, about her faith not helping her when she needs it most. It has been a year since her husband died, and she f

To say merely that it was “inappropriate” would be a gross understatement. On a Sunday afternoon in the great Romanesque abbey church of Maria Laach in the German Rheinland, a mother and father with three preteen children strolled down the aisle casually licking their ice cream cones. Al

Ilive and teach in Rockville, Md. Before Oct. 3, 95 percent of Americans would have been hard-pressed to locate our quiet suburban neighborhood on a state map. But the events of the last several weeks have exploded anonymity. A killer has taken deadly aim—over and over again—and now anyo

In his new novel Umberto Eco semiotics professor and the author of a number of essays and novels offers a stylistic tour-de-force set in the latter part of the reign of Frederick Barbarossa Holy Roman Emperor from 1155 to 1190 The core of the novel is Baudolino mdash an unreliable narrator with

In The New Faithful Colleen Carroll a young journalist from St Louis offers a breezy tour through the lives of today rsquo s Protestant and Catholic young adults who practice a traditionalist form of faith They clamor for pre-Vatican II pieties embrace condemnations of abortion homosexuality

Back in the 1960 rsquo s some angry radicals liked to call their country Amerika the k vaguely hinting that the land of the free and the home of the brave was in fact a cruel and alien place with a whiff or two of Nazism Really angry radicals sometimes spelled it AmeriKKKa Curiously enough En

I drove to a retreat house in Wilmington, Del., wondering how I had come to this point in my life. Up until two months earlier, I felt only animosity for the Catholic religion and disdain for its teachings. But now I had driven an hour away from my home, to be with people I didn’t know, on a r