The U.S. bishops issued a statement at their November meeting in Washington, D.C., called Welcoming the Stranger Among Us. Although largely intended as guidelines for parishes with many new members who come from other countries and cultures, the document also makes brief but pointed reference to the

Ari Goldman and I worked side by side some 20 years ago at The New York Times We admired each other I think for a perceived seriousness in the way we went about covering the religion beat It wasn rsquo t just a job it was a vocationto get the story right not just get it written But we were not

The distinction between fact and fiction is often a contested one Nor does it remain static especially for novelists like Graham Greene and Michael Ondaatje who have drawn their inspiration from the fractured politics of our just past century In The English Patient it was World War II and its ru

Pope Announces Seven More CardinalsIn a surprising and unprecedented move, Pope John Paul II named seven new cardinals after having appointed 37 just a week earlier. The new nominees included archbishops from Ukraine and Latvia whom the pope had designated cardinals in pectore—in his heart&mda

Arlo Guthries classic 1960s folk song, which told us you could get anything you want at Alices Restaurant, has its 90s counterpart on the Internet. There you can visit Go Ask Alice, Columbia Universitys funky site for straight shooting, nonjudgmental answers concerning your physical, emotional, and

It doesn’t take much to get me on the Staten Island ferrythat wondrous half-hour trip across the New York harbor to an island that is one of the city’s five boroughs. Usually, the occasion is a friend’s visit to New York City. Few are those who, looking back from the ferry midway,

One might hope that 10 years after the end of the cold war, a policy of mutual assured destruction would have been relegated to the dustbin of history. But cold war mental habits die hard. The United States and Russia still square off against each other with tons of chemical weapons and thousands of

For Palestinians, Christmas 2000 was to have been a celebration not only of the second millennium of Jesus’ birth, in which they would play host to the Christian world. It also was to have marked the emergence of Palestine as a destination for world travel with Bethlehem as its center. The Wor

Just before the November election, I gave a lecture in a parish on Christian responsibility in an election year. I suggested that we have to take a variety of issues into consideration in making a judgment about the best candidate and that voters could opt for a strategy other than legal interdictio