Social Justice
The Big Dig
Last fall, the Archdiocese of Boston released an ambitious plan designed to stem the decline it has experienced—in priests, Mass attendance, and treasure...
A Bronx Tale
When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recently remarked from the bench that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 perpetuated “racial entitlement,” his fellow Justice...
The Way Forward on Guns
Victories often contain the seeds of future defeats. So it is -- or at least should be -- with the Senate's morally reprehensible rejection of expanded...
Redeemed from Death?
As I begin what will be my seventh (!) decade as a Catholic, I find that I am less and less sure of what Catholics believe.Oh, I know our opinions. Especially...
Finding Facts, Making Stories
In one of the most anticipated plays of the season, Nora Ephron’s Lucky Guy, Tom Hanks stars as Mike McAlary, a writer who worked his way to stardom at three New...
Walled In
Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency, oversees counterterrorism and intelligence gathering in Israel and the Palestinian territories. It also bears...
Why ‘Francis’?
Of the many virtues associated with St. Francis of Assisi, humility was the first to occur to me as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio stood before the multitude for...
The Church in Latin America
A Latin-American pope! From Chile to Mexico—and among U.S. Latinos—there was a collective gasp of surprise and excitement over the news of the conclave’s election...
Complicit?
Virtually everyone in Latin America (and North America as well) had every reason to be thrilled with the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, SJ, cardinal archbishop...
A New Center of Gravity
In winning election as Pope Francis, Jorge Mario Bergoglio defied the papal pundits, even though they should have seen him coming. His rise marks the decisive shift...
When in Rome...
It's been a long time since I have read a book about the church that made me laugh out loud. In The Vatican Diaries, John Thavis presents many stories that will...
Polarization, Church and Country
What do the Roman Catholic Church and the American political system have in common? Both are divided into factions that neither trust nor understand each other, and...
