As the church looks for new ways to respond to the needs of poor immigrants in urban areas like New York City, are there lessons we can learn from efforts to help earlier arrivals? Although The Godfather might lead us to believe that joining the Corleone family was the dream of every young Italian i

It is Friday, 9:15 p.m. Bruce backs the outreach van out of the parking area of Boston’s Pine Street Inn. It’s well packed with blankets, various articles of clothing, sandwiches, hot and cold water, instant hot chocolate and soup packets, some crackers and a case of oranges. Sean and I

As the American memory of Thanksgiving fades and the pace quickens before Christmas, I hold before me a large postcard collage crafted by the Shalom network of the School Sisters of Notre Dame. Two compelling imagesa plume of smoke bulging from the World Trade Center, and a woman, apparently Afghan,

Military tribunals have been around for a long time in the United States, and they have often been controversial. The very idea of such courts is now provoking dissent both here and abroad. On Nov. 13 President Bush signed an executive order permitting individuals who are accused of terrorism and ar

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, as well as the ensuing war between a global coalition led by the United States and the Taliban in Afghanistan have made many wonder about the relationship between religion and terrorism. The United States and its allies have been at p

In light of the events of Sept. 11, television seemsif this is possibleeven more banal than before. Despite the estimable Walter Cronkite's pronouncement at the much-delayed 2001 Emmy Awards that television helps to unite us and heal us and blah, blah, blah, it's hard not to look on the majo

Outcry on Cloning and Prenatal SelectionThe Vatican condemned the cloning of human embryos by U.S. scientists, rejecting claims that the research produced simple cells and not human individuals. Despite the scientists’ stated humanitarian aims, the research represents a new form of discriminat

In the summer of 1961 I asked the proprietor of a Catholic bookstore in Paris whether he had a copy of Yves Congar rsquo s True and False Reform in the Church After looking around he took me into a back office and from a bottom drawer pulled out a copy of the book Only later did I learn the moti

I began writing my review of John Updike rsquo s new collection of poems Americana during the week of Sept 11 and froze unable to inch forward as the ironies in a book that begins with 15 poems about seeing America from the air compounded and screamed back at me Poems with titles like ldquo C