It was with great joy, President Bush said on Jan. 29, that he was announcing his plan to encourage private charitable agencies, both religious and secular. His basic policy is not new, but his applications of it are. Collaboration has been going on for generations between private social work agenci

In an article about maturity they contributed to Robert Nugent’s book A Challenge to Love (1983), the psychologists James and Evelyn Whitehead use the metaphor of journey or passage to explain the loss and gain or peril and possibility that accompany significant moments in life. At the death o

The re-election in October of a former Communist, Aleksander Kwasniewski, to a five-year term as president of Poland should be a lesson to the Polish church, according to Stanislaw Obirek, S.J., editor of the Polish review of spirituality, Zycie Duchowe. For me and others, Father Obirek said, that w

Art is a blood sport. Really. Someone, something must be sacrificed during the game, while heartless spectators stare in fascination at the suffering orchestrated for their amusement. Just think how many of the world’s greatest artists made a demolition derby of their lives, systematically wre

In The Soul Knows No Bars Drew Ledera professor of Eastern and Western philosophy at Loyola College in Marylanddescribes his experience as a teacher at the Maryland Penitentiary in Baltimore Others involved in prison education have also written of their on-site work but this is a very different t

During his recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land Pope John Paul II enacted three iconic moments that symbolized to the world the new relationship between Catholicismalso Christianityand Judaism and the Jewish people These were 1 his shaking hands with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak which symbo

Reading Mark Salzman rsquo s spare astringent novella about the struggles of a cloistered Carmelite nun inevitably reminds one of Ron Hansen rsquo s contemporary masterpiece Mariette in Ecstasy Sister John of the Cross is decades older than Hansen rsquo s teenage novice and has lived in the conv

In These Pages: From March 12, 2001.

Theologian Calls Vatican Investigation a ‘Great Suffering’Though ultimately cleared of doctrinal error, a Belgian theologian, Jacques Dupuis, S.J., said a two-and-and-a-half-year Vatican investigation of his book on non-Christian religions had been “a very great suffering.” T