On Friday evening, Sept. 29, poets, musicians, theologians and friends gathered in the James Chapel at Union Theological Seminary in New York City to celebrate the life and work of the Orthodox priest Alexander Men. Among other delights, we heard from Father Men’s son Mikhail, currently vice g

A generation has elapsed since the close of the Second Vatican Council, and the church has underscored the council’s extraordinary ecclesial and historical significance by beatifying, this Sept. 3, Pope John XXIII. At the same time, however, the beatification of Pope Pius IX highlighted the ti

Facing the challenges and accepting the gifts offered by homosexual priests in the Catholic Church

Although you would never know it from coverage of the Elián González custody battle, a quiet but thoroughly monumental revolution is taking place in the American family. The number of fathers solely responsible for the care of their children is growing at a rate almost twice that of single mothers

Kosovo is a land in need of a voice. And the only one I can hear, or even imagine, is Sylvia Poggioli of National Public Radio. As I ride along on the bus I hear her describing the shattered houses and ruined streets. I wait for her to tell me about the tragedies peppered all over the sometimes-beau

Laity May Fill Communion Cups; Indult ProposedClearing up some of the confusion surrounding the revised General Instruction of the Roman Missal, the U.S. bishops have received a Vatican ruling permitting extraordinary eucharistic ministers to pour consecrated wine into chalices for Communion. The bi

Offended by DrawingI sincerely hope that I am not the only one offended by the cartoon of the ugly prelate accompanying the commentary on the liturgical readings for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time (The Word, 10/14). It is not worthy of the commentary, to which it gives a distasteful flavor, nor su

Do Americans think their public schools are in what Gov. George W. Bush has been calling an education recession? It depends. Which Americans and which schools? Parents in Scarsdale, Grosse Pointe, New Trier Township and Beverly Hills do not seem to think their local public schools need radical overh

Last spring I ran a seminar on the contemporary Catholic imagination in America and at the end I asked my students to write about their own religious imaginations One found a surprise she discovered she had a religious imagination But she shouldn rsquo t have been surprised everyone has onea se