The Second Vatican Council promulgated on Dec. 7, 1965, a decree on the ministry and life of priests that was entitled from its opening words Presbyterorum Ordinis. The sentence in full stated that this council "has already on several occasions drawn the attention of the world to the excellence

A number of years ago, when I was a parish priest, a woman preparing for baptism at Easter asked if she could speak with me privately. There were various issues that had been bothering her, and she wished to discuss them. I had come to know her somewhat during the preceding months and appreciated th

In his historic visit to the Holy Land, Pope John Paul II once again captured the imagination of the world. The stooped figure in white with shaking hands somehow projected a strength beyond reason, a spiritual strength that came from an absolute faith in his mission to proclaim God’s love and

All things are relative, as they say. With the domestic fuel supply dwindling and neither the president nor OPEC budging from the status quo, we have been told to expect at least a $2 per gallon automobile gas price by June. But then, as a local radio commentator remarked recently, just imagine the

Pope Preaches Reconciliation and Peace in Holy LandWith slow but determined steps, Pope John Paul II made his long-desired pilgrimage to the Holy Land, preaching peace and reconciliation among the region's peoples and religions. From the heights of Mount Nebo in Jordan to the shores of the Sea o

Academic authors occasionally write with verve and color there rsquo s no law against it but when their subject is academe itself caveat lector The historians Jon Roberts U of Wisconsin Stevens Point and James Turner Notre Dame devote a full third of their text to notes and glosses They

On the way as a guest to the annual meeting of the Chrysostom Society a community of Christian writers that includes novelists poets biographers and essayists I toted along this newly arrived book--oil to Houston perhaps By the time the plane landed in that city I had finished the seven grac

Agnes Browne is a Dublin widow with seven children six sons struggling to see her offspring into maturity in the Dublin of the early 1970 rsquo s It was the time of the first lurch toward prosperity that would anticipate the present era of the Celtic Tiger in which the standard of living of Irel

At first the inclusion of Brian De Palma among the six directors thoughtfully dissected in Richard A Blake rsquo s AfterImage The Indelible Catholic Imagination of Six American Filmmakers did not seem to fit The other five mdash Martin Scorsese Alfred Hitchcock John Ford Frank Capra and Franci

Everyone has been trying to see the big picture. We have been bombarded with a certain type of question. Who is the man or woman of the century—better, of the millennium? What are the happenings in the past thousand years that most changed the course of history?