Avery Dulles became a Roman Catholic in 1940 when he was a first-year student at the Harvard Law School. Two years later, he was commissioned as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy and served on submarine chasers and aircraft carriers patrolling Atlantic and Mediterranean waters. For his liaiso

As I write this column, Pope John Paul II is celebrating the end of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 on the feast of the Epiphany. I must admit that I dont get very excited about celebrating events like this, and the constant reference to jubilee wore thin as the year progressed. Part of my hesita

Certainly one of the most surprising revelations in my life has been my experience with women religious. Before entering religious life I cherished the same notions about sisters that much of the American public does. They were - as I understood from the media, popular culture and even popular Catho

It is a truism that Americans spend more than we need to and consume more than we have to. But doesn’t it seem that our desire to consume superfluous goods has lately grown to alarming proportions? The other day, for example, I caught a TV commercial for Fit. In case you’ve not yet been

One thing that no one told me before ordination was that I would start having what a Jesuit friend refers to as Mass nightmares.Mass nightmares are similar to the dreams everyone seems to experience during school years, and sometimes beyond. For example: you’re sitting unsuspectingly in a clas

There it was, Baltimore’s huge gulag of a jail and prison complex covering two and a half city blocks. I was looking at it from the northeast corner of St. Ignatius Church, where I was to give a talk on prison ministry that Monday evening; the sight served as a useful if painful inward prepara