It was hot standing outside the row of one-room wooden “houses,” and I could not keep the mosquitoes and gnats away from my face and arms as we spoke. I poked around inside a small two-bed cubicle at their invitation—aware that the only access to air besides the screenless window w

Sandra Schneiders rsquo new book on religious life in the Catholic community is a veritable buffet feast of data reflection analysis and opinion there is plenty here to make many people uncomfortable and some probably irritated But there is even more that will give hope to manyboth inside and o

What to do about China Steven Mosher thumps for the containment of China by reinvigorating American alliances with its Asian allies denying access to technologies that enhance China rsquo s military making trade dependent on ending human rights abuses and unabashedly seeking the continuation of A

At this writing I have read five reviews of Carroll rsquo s book and participated in a daylong conference at Brandeis occasioned by its publication One review by Rabbi James Rudin for Religious News Service is generally laudatory another by Andrew Sullivan in The New York Times more cautiousl

Two Dioceses Object to Program for April N.C.E.A. ConventionCiting objections to programming at the upcoming National Catholic Educational Association convention, officials of the dioceses of Peoria, Ill., and Pittsburgh said they will not allocate diocesan funds to pay for teachers to attend the co

In mid-November, I took the bus down to Washington to sit in on the fall meeting of the U.S. bishops - partly because they were to vote on their pastoral statement regarding the need to re-vamp our draconian criminal justice system, an issue I follow for America. The meeting spanned four days, and o

I spotted the woman the moment I walked into the hospital lobby. Shaking and sobbing uncontrollably, she was talking to someone on the phone. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, yet I felt a strong urge to comfort her. But something stopped me. She’s a stranger, I reminded myself, and i

A number of articles and books over the last few years have asked: What will the church look like in 20 years? Underlying this basic concern is an awareness that today’s young Catholic adults have not, it seems, employed the models of earlier generations to appropriate the faith and lack the c

Back in the 17th century, the Anglican priest-poet George Herbert maintained that the national sin of his day was idleness. Whether that was an accurate portrayal we must leave to historians and sociologists. But Herbert had no qualms in proposing that there was sin—one of a national kind.This