This coming Saturday Father David O rsquo Connell CM will preside over his twelfth and final graduation ceremonies as the President of the Catholic University of America As an alumnus of CUA I remember the excitement I felt when I first saw him walk into the bookstore at Kramerbooks 12 years ag

Timing isn rsquo t everything but it is something And the world has shrunk so much that nowadays an avalanche of important events seems to fall on us with increasing regularity if not all the time To complexity and speed we should add a third challenging aspect of modern life simultaneity Con

A thank you to the nuns and a story relevant to child psychology today nbsp nbsp nbsp Wesley Van Ornum was born December 14 1914--a year when an assassin rsquo s bullet began a war as brutal as any where death came by mustard gas instead of suicide bombers Soon my father would experience

Yesterday Pope Benedict XVI nbsp called sexual abuse ldquo truly terrifying rdquo nbsp nbsp In his frank comments to reporters aboard the plane en route to Portugal he seemed to rebut curial officials who have sought to portray the crisis as somehow generated from the outside nbsp The greate

Deal Hudson has decided to join the recriminations against Sister Carol Keehan DC of the Catholic Health Association for her support of the health care overhaul that is now the law of the land Deal Hudson of course was the GOP rsquo s go-to guy during the Bush years and he made his opposition

Last week for four days I was in Kananaskis Alberta about 90 minutes from Calgary I was speaking at the annual Blueprints conference an extraordinarily well-coordinated gathering for principals of Catholic schools and their trustees I returned to the close of the Fordham school year utterl

Honest talk from the archbishop of Dublin on sex abuse Why am I discouraged nbsp The most obvious reason is the drip-by-drip never-ending revelation about child sexual abuse and the disastrous way it was handled nbsp nbsp There are still strong forces which would prefer that the truth did not

I admit in my recent Of Many Things column that I sometimes give in to the temptation to tune out the sex abuse scandal As a Catholic journalist I am obligated to follow the story as it unfolds but when I can I look away So on Sunday morning as I open up The Week in Review forgive me if I

The new PM has just appeared outside No 10 Downing St to give a speech We are going to have hard and difficult things to do he said - meaning not just confronting a massive deficit but also leading a coalition government with the Liberal-Democrats for this we now know is what it will be Mu

Gordon Brown has tendered his resignation to the Queen bringing to a close 13 years of Labor rule The Conservative Party leader David Cameron is in Buckingham Palace as I write being commissioned by the Queen to form the next nbsp government As I begin this there is no prime minister but by

We feature two online conversations this week the first is with Clayton Sinyai a member of the Catholic Labor Network and the director of strategic campaigns for the Amalgamated Transit Union Speaking at a conference on Caritas in Veritate held at Princeton University Clayton explored what the p

Pope in strongest comments to date on sex abuse crisis Prepping a Sodano retirement And when is that visit to the Pope Celestine Shrine Mid-July From the NY Times ldquo The greatest persecution of the church does not come from the enemies outside but is born from sin inside the church

One of the measures for sound political decision-making is whether a given decision is being attacked equally from both ideological extremes The nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court is evidently a sound political decision by the President Better to say as sound as can be expected when

Wait you nbsp didn t see Betty White the 88-year-old actress and comedian nbsp hosting Saturday Night Live nbsp Then pray get thee to Hulu nbsp Or rather just check out her SNL monologue above nbsp Fast forward through the Lawrence Welk spot to 5 00 on this clip nbsp Doubtless

Will the nbsp illiteracy about religion in our nation rsquo s major newspapers never end Kathleen Parker whom I often enjoy reading had an op-ed in the Sunday Washington Post that was filled with the kind of stupidity about religion that would never be permitted if the subject were politics econ

Beating Back the Squid; New Eyes on the Prize; African Beliefs

Matteo Ricci's cross-cultural mission to China

A wise historians synthesis of his career work on World War II