About 10 years ago, a home video of a young Dutch woman named Maria appeared in a PBS presentation called Choosing Death. Weighing 42 pounds, she was backed against a stark white wall, her sunken eyes searching, darting. She was 25 years old. For 14 of those years she had been suffering from anorexi

The first ratings of clerical performance by the laity occurred almost a half century ago in a study by Catholic Digest, which was in fact the first sample survey ever of American religion. At that time 40 percent of Americans, whether Protestant or Catholic, rated their clergy as “excellent&r

When I was little, Saturday nights were often spent sleeping over at Grandmom’s house. I loved these Saturday nights; she was the perfect grandmom, bubbly and doting and willing to spoil us with Lucky Charms cereal until we were sick. She was also a devout Roman Catholic, so Sunday mornings al

WARNING: In this essay I use the terms conservative and liberal that no one likes. I don’t like those labels! everyone says, implying (whether intentionally or not) that their own position is too complex and nuanced to be captured by something so simplistic as a one-word label. I use those lab

From the archives: Paul Mariani on the poetry of Seamus Heaney

Gerald Coleman is a nuanced thinker, a faithful churchman and a sensitive pastoral guide. His writing on sexuality is widely respected and justifiably influential in Catholic circles, especially among people involved in the church’s ministry with and for lesbian and gay persons and their famil

Catholic Health System, Union Set Expedited Election RulesCatholic Healthcare West and the Service Employees International Union have signed a landmark agreement on procedures and conduct for expedited union representation elections. The 15-page accord between the nation’s largest health care

Sometimes it seems that it takes a layperson to understand religious life. Recently I had the chance to read a superb new book entitled For the Love of God: The Faith and Future of the American Nun, written by, of all people, a senior writer at GQ magazine, who was raised with no religious training

Currently, the best show on television may not be The West Wing, E.R., Sex in the City or even The Sopranos, a series that The New York Times, in an uncharacteristic burst of critical hyperbole, called the most significant work of popular culture in the last 25 years. No, the most satisfying show on

It should come as no secret that most readers of America don’t read the poems that appear in its pages. In fact, according to the uplifting annual or semi-annual surveys America’s editor in chief sends me, even the ads get more attention than the poems I send him. But then people read Am