Shock, denial, anger and depression swept the country on Sept. 11 as the nation watched thousands of civilians and military people viciously murdered by terrorists. Not since Pearl Harbor has the United States suffered such a devastating attack on its soil, and the number of dead exceeds those kille

Once upon a time.... With these words, the power of story comes alive for children whose imaginations are the doorway to identity and meaning in life. Whether read aloud or viewed on the wide screen of Disney’s media kingdom, the myths of childhood can be a healthy aspect of development. On th

Feeling wooed? You should be, at least according to pundits and Washington insiders. It seems that 2001 has been the year for courting the Catholic vote. The term burst on the scene shortly after the inauguration and has consistently shown up in news stories ever since, particularly with respect to

One of the more interesting and paradoxical characters in the debate over capital punishment is the person on the political right who attempts to combine the libertarian suspicion of the state with support for capital punishment Such a person like George W Bush or Ronald Reagan affirms that the

The Key WordCongratulations to Francis A. Sullivan, S.J., for his article, “The Magisterium in the New Millennium” (8/27). Father Sullivan feels he has no “prophetic gifts” with which to foresee how the magisterium will be exercised in the future. I believe he is a prophet fo

My first encounter with homelessness came when I was 10 or 12. Passing a friend’s house in my hometown in Maryland late one summer afternoon, I was amazed to see two people sound asleep at the edge of the wooded lot next door: a man and a woman who evidently had no place to stay for the night.

U.S. trade policies must be “fully aligned with our values,” the new United States Trade Representative, Robert B. Zoellick, said in an interview published in The Washington Post on March 13. “I’m convinced, whether it relates to child labor, forced labor, or HIV/AIDS—a

A study by Creighton University’s Center for Marriage and Family in 1999 indicates that today roughly 40 percent of all Catholics marry non-Catholics.

The international team of Panayiotis Zavos, of the University of Kentucky, and Servino Antinori of Rome, Italy, and a group called the Raelians, who think humans were made by aliens using genetic technologies, have both announced that they are moving forward on the human cloning project. The Raelian

About a year ago I wrote in this space about the challenge of interfaith marriages and families, and to my delight, I received several affirming letters from priests and lay people. They agreed that the church’s response to such unions will be among the defining issues of 21st-century Catholic