Every parish priest and university chaplain knows the story. The young couple visits their pastor to make arrangements for their wedding. The pastor begins to ask the questions on the prenuptial questionnaire. The young man gives his address and later the young woman. It appears they live at the sam

Editor’s note: In Germany, candidates for teaching positions in Catholic theology at universities and seminaries must receive a mandatum (nihil obstat) from a bishop. Since these academic positions are state appointments, this use of the nihil obstat arose over the last century in order to pre

But Mousie thou art no thy laneIn proving foresight may be vain The best-laid schemes o rsquo mice and menGang aft a-gley An rsquo lea rsquo e us nought but grief an rsquo painFor promis rsquo d joy Robert Burns To a Mouse 1786Robert Burns rsquo s reflections have entered the language as a pr

If Professor Fogel were giving his students a multiple-choice test on the new egalitarianism one likely question would be Which is the greater agent of equity in prosperous America He would probably present five choices a federal government b transnational corporations c trade unions d th

Bunnies RuleMore bunnies, please, out of James Martin’s hat (Of Many Things, 8/26)! Peter Cottontail with Karl Rahner and Father Martin’s nephew made me laugh today - again!Mary Anne ZakSuffield, Conn. Manifesting CommunityThomas J. McCarthy’s column (7/29) struck a very famil

On the first Sunday of the new millennium, I went to my parents’ usual church, Our Lady of Good Voyage in Gloucester, Mass. On the second Sunday I knelt, freezing, below the great dome of the Pantheon in Rome and listened to a Latin Mass sung in purest Gregorian chant. On the third, I sat demu

How should the Catholic Church in the United States respond to what some have labeled the gay agenda? One way would be simply to restate what has been declared repeatedly. This approach, however, may not meet the challenge. The so-called gay agenda has been in the making roughly since 1969, when the

Theologians Urge National Procedure for MandatumA committee of the Catholic Theological Society of America has urged national review and appeal procedures if a U.S. bishop wants to withhold or withdraw a theologian’s mandatum. In a 61-page report the committee expressed strong continuing reser

This book honors a 12-year-old martyr by the name of FoyFaith in Englishin the southwest of France during the last of the Roman persecutions in A D 303 Five centuries later in what is called a Furtive Translation or pious robbery her remains were carried off from Agen in the Garonne to the to

Monsignor Jacques Suaudeau of the Pontifical Council for the Family recently published “Prophylactics or Family Values? Stopping the Spread of HIV/AIDS” in the weekly edition of L’Osservatore Romano (4/19). Here we find important signals of what many have suspected all along: that