Brother Roger of Taizé Murdered in ChurchBrother Roger Schütz, the 90-year-old Protestant founder of the ecumenical Taizé community in France, was stabbed in the throat during a Vespers service in the Reconciliation Church near Maçon in France on Aug. 16. He died almost immediately. Some of thos
The Irish Republican Army’s recent announcement that it would dump arms and end its decades-long campaign against the British seemed oddly anticlimactic. Save for a brief episode in the mid-1990’s, the I.R.A. has been on a cease-fire since 1994. So its dump-arms order received only passi
From the 1930’s through the 1950’s, Catholic parishes operated more than 100 labor schools in the basements of immigrant churches. Parishioners learned about their rights as workers, Catholic social teaching and how to organize unions. For many, being a good Catholic and a good labor lea
Cardinal John J. O’Connor died five years ago, but I frequently remember the times we worked together on the critical issues faced by our two communities. Our friendship was a result of the Second Vatican Council. In October 1965, 2,200 Catholic bishops adopted Nostra Aetate, the Declaration o
Fifteen minutes after landing in Haiti, I was having serious doubts as to whether or not this trip was a good idea. I had come to Haiti accompanying another Catholic college group at the request of my own school, to see about the possibility of setting up a joint yearly immersion trip. Our guide, a
No painting in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York is more iconic than Paul Cézanne’s “Bather,” the pensive young man walking on water in a spare blue and beige landscape. For decades he greeted visitors in the first room of the earlier museum. He currently pres
I read Christopher Ruddy’s review of volume two of my Christian Community in History with some surprise (8/1). The whole two-volume work is a history, not of the church, but of ecclesiology, the understanding of the church. Thus I was pleased when he wrote of the