One night recently I was visiting with a group of friends and listening to the music of Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, John Coltrane and Ray Charles. Our conversation about African-American culture turned to a thought-provoking question: Why do more and more African-Americans reject the c

While playing with his little brother next to their home in Quang Tri province, Giang, five at the time, picked up an explosive device. It detonated. His three-year-old brother was killed instantaneously. Giang lost a hand and an eye and still has several pieces of shrapnel embedded in his body. He

Professors Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, who teach sociology at the University of Washington and Purdue University respectively, think the Catholic Church will suffer membership reverses characteristic of mainline Protestant denominations. The two professors offered the following observations on the

More than 2,500 years ago the Greek historian Herodotus observed that if anyone were given the opportunity of choosing from among all the nations of the world the best set of beliefs, he would inevitably choose those of his own country. Herodotus further asserted that everyone believes his own nativ

In the oppressive heat of the midday sun, the nun in full habit held two heavy shovels. She walked just behind the gravediggers, who tried to carry with some dignity a lifeless body wrapped in old hospital bedsheets. We had arrived here in India just a few weeks before this burial.

Pope Links Fatima Secret To Assassination AttemptPope John Paul II, ordering the publication of the third secret of Fatima, believes part of it was a direct reference to the attempt made on his life in 1981, said the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano. Cardinal Sodano, the highest-ra

DisengagedWhy confine our concern to killing priests (4/29)? It seems that we could say the same about every person in church ministry. The outdated paradigm threatens the soul of every director of religious education, pastoral assistant and active minister who tries to balance the increasing demand

Generalizations about races or nations, however prejudiced, usually have some basis in fact.- Peter Mansfield, The Arabs.

It might surprise many to learn that no bishop has ministered to more persons living with AIDS than Cardinal John O’Connor, who by his own report tended to countless patients at St. Clare’s Hospital. I dare say also that no bishop has directly ministered to more priests and bishops who w

In this Jubilee year, the issue of wealth distribution, especially as it relates to the larger macroeconomic issues of international debt and globalization, has received a good deal of attention and analysis. For this we should be thankful. What has not received much attention, however, are the resp