An older Jesuit once told me he felt that priests have a much harder life than laypeople. We’re always "on call," he explained, and have so many responsibilitiescelebrating Masses, hearing confessions, living in community, preparing homilies and the like. Laypeople can set their own

A recent series of articles in The Kansas City Star on Catholic priests suffering from AIDS-related illnesses has focused attention on a difficult issue. Despite the incendiary nature of its topic, the seriesthough flawedaimed for balance and proved compelling. The survey’s main weaknesses lay

This past year my wife and I grew weary of the vertiginous dance of dual-career parenting. In the end, I decided to surrender the professorial life in order to pursue nonacademic writing and be with my kids, who are one and three. Everyone has been very supportive: "You’re doing the right

The Rev. Jim Consedine, a priest in the Diocese of Christchurch in New Zealand, is national coordinator for his country’s Restorative Justice Network. A prison chaplain for 21 years, he is the author of two books: Restorative Justice: Healing the Effects of Crime (1995, 1999) and, with Helen B

One of the perennial problems facing liberal democracies with a domestic security threat is how to meet that threat without sacrificing some of the very values that make the society liberal and democratic. The Israeli Supreme Court was recently confronted with precisely this issue, and the judgment

Suppression of religious minorities and its nuclear blasts have made India visible to the world.

The demonstrationunprecedented since the Vietnam war erathat convulsed normally laid-back Seattle late last fall had two results. It brought the work of the World Trade Organization to a halt, and it reintroduced the issue of globalization to the American political scene. Labor had unsuccessfully fo

The announcement in London that 45-year-old Cherie Blair, wife of the British prime minister, is expecting her fourth child produced the expected acres of newspaper column inches. But one historic angle of the story was completely ignored by journalists. For the first time ever a British prime minis

Not long ago I came across an article about one Mr. Newton Minow, the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission who famously described television in the 1960’s as "a vast wasteland." Doubtless it would have surprised Mr. Minow that his phrase still sums up the current