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

George Lucas’s “Star Wars” has spawned a multi-billion dollar industry, including sequels, prequels and a limitless array of paraphernalia. It’s a juggernaut that shows no sign of abating. Few ideas have captured the popular imagination quite the way it has. National missile

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

Although their day has long passed, the moral theology textbooks in use before the Second Vatican Council were not without a number of enduring merits. These seminary manuals, for example, recognized the need, in establishing the truth of an ethical thesis, to define all relevant terms fully and exa

Summer is not a good time to have significant events occur; too often they are missed by those who should know about them and would want to know about them. It is likely, for example, that even dedicated readers of the Catholic press did not see two announcements that should not go unacknowledged.Tw

What caused the war in the former Yugoslavia? Over 15 or 20 years ago we had a feeling that the end of Communism was coming. The whole Medjugorje event was an intimation of things to come. We were happy that Communism was going to end, but we also knew that Marshall Tito’s powerful bureaucrac

The United States once again holds first place as the world’s biggest arms sellerso noted the recent report of the Congressional Research Service, Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, delivered annually to Congress. Here is a troubling distinction indeed, given the fact that the

Degraded ProcessIt was very disheartening to read the article by John W. O’Malley, S.J., on Pius IX (8/26). Why have saints at all, if there is so much politics and deceit involved in the process of becoming a saint? Shouldn’t a saint be a role model and provide encouragement for how one

Protestants Respond to Vatican DocumentThe World Council of Churches warned of potential damage to ecumenical dialogue following the release of a Vatican document emphasizing the Catholic Church’s pre-eminent status among Christian denominations. What a tragedy if the witness of joint Christia

Back in the 1950’s, when I was a kid in a Jesuit high school, a novel called Mr. Blue, by Myles Connolly, was all the rage. The eponymous hero was a mystical type who combined the social activism of Dorothy Day with the contemplative reserve of Thomas Merton. In short, he made Catholicism cool