This year is the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees—a body of international law aimed at ensuring the rights of people fleeing persecution and civil unrest. Overshadowing the celebratory note appropriate to such an occasion, however, is the fac

I once heard a talk by a priest who was also a clinical psychologist, in which he said: “If you are a Christian, you have to believe that people can change. If you don’t believe people can change, you have no right to call yourself a believer in Jesus Christ and in his Gospel message. It

It was a lovely summer morning, perfect for the first Ladies Day Out for the women in my family. From all over Virginia, we gathered for brunch in a private dining room at a historic hotel in Richmond. Our holiday was the newest twist on our family’s tradition of enjoying the pleasure of one a

Complete PersonThanks for an excellent article on “The Church and Psychiatry” (7/30). When the idea of becoming a Catholic priest first took hold of me, I ran away, much like Jonah. I decided to go into professional psychology instead. In working on my Ph.D. in clinical psychology I foun

Faced with a growing pro-democracy movement led by intellectuals, journalists and the labor movement, King Mswati III of Swaziland (a small African country surrounded by South Africa and Mozambique) has cracked down on dissent and declared a state of emergency. Press censorship, arrest of dissidents

Israeli Troops Enter Village, Make Night ‘Like Hell’Night in the mainly Christian village of Beit Jalla was “like hell,” said the Rev. Yacoub Abdel Nur, pastor of Annunciation Catholic Church, after Israeli forces entered the village. “It was terrible; nobody could slee

Frank McCourt rsquo s impoverished youth in Limerick recalled so vividly and brutally in Angela rsquo s Ashes actually could have been much worse according to the acclaimed author rsquo s cousin ldquo When we were in Killarney industrial school rdquo Pat Sheehan tells the writer and documen

Early Christian history takes on a decidedly postmodern turn in this new-in-paperback work by the Cambridge classicist Keith Hopkins In style reminiscent in parts of Gerd Theissen rsquo s Shadow of the Galilean Christology in the form of a novel and Dutch Edmund Morris rsquo s biography of Ronal