Yesterday we attended a Good Friday justice walk modeled on the Stations of the Cross nbsp Living in a new town I had hoped that it would provide an entry into the suffering struggles and salvation of this place nbsp It was sponsored by a broad coalition of local churches and justice groups

Good Friday is too solemn a day for blogging especially about something as ephemeral as politics But today with the Church besieged by scandal I hope that pastors who are called upon to preach will preach about the scandal of the Cross We have lost that sense of the Cross When we see a cross a

Yes you read that right nbsp America has nbsp published--posted--its first article ever in Spanish nbsp Yes a bit late given the predominance of Spanish-speaking Catholics in this country but better late than jam aacute s nbsp The story A few months ago I was invited to speak at this year

According to a 2004 study of the lifetime distribution of health care costs the per-capita lifetime expenditure for women is one-third higher than for men 361 200 and 268 700 respectively And that s for those with insurance The study used data from 3 75 million Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mich

In this week s issue the editors weigh in on the U S bishops conerns about and reactions to the recently passed health care reform bill The great stumbling block to endorsing the bill was the fear that under the terms of the core Senate bill financing might seep out through community health

Two new pieces on the burgeoning sexual abuse crisis are now up on our Web site First a Web-only analysis from Thomas J Reese S J of the Woodstock Theological Center and former editor of America of course on what the European bishops can learn from the U S sexual abuse crisis The biggest m

Yesterday in a post on the response to the New York Times story about the Milwaukee situation I referred to the reply of Father Brundage a central figure in the case nbsp and repeated his claim that he had been misquoted by the Times The Times has now pointed out that he was not quoted at all i

More so than in 2002 when the clerical sex abuse crisis exploded into American newspapers church leaders and prominent Catholics have accused the media of unjustly targeting the church specifically the pope nbsp The reporting on the issue is they say inaccurate unfair and motivated by anti-C

I don t even know what this is called nbsp Techies weigh in here nbsp It s sort of an online high-res movable 360-degree clickable image of the Sistine Chapel nbsp Check it out nbsp Wait for it to load and then drag your mouse to where you want to go and zoom in nbsp Sometimes I feel

Rob Weinert-Kendt one of our theater critics and who writes the zippy blog The Wicked Stage looks at three dramas that had limited runs this season-- Time Stands Still A View from nbsp the Bridge and The Miracle Worker --and wonders whether the presence of so many movie stars Liev Schreiber

Offshore drilling is like pregnancy ndash there is no halfway So it is more than a little surprising that President Barack Obama who campaigned against off-shore drilling along the Eastern seaboard has now decided to embrace it as part of his effort to pass a climate change bill The Post rsqu

Cardinal William Levada the prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith has responded to articles criticizing Pope Benedict XVI Ithen Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger for his handling of the case of an abusive priest in Milwaukee particularly as detailed in The New York Times last week in

In 1998 I started to run sexual abuse survivor groups at Klinic Community Health Centre in Winnipeg for men who had been abused as children I ran these groups until 2001 when I returned to the academic world on a full-time basis When I started these groups many people told me that they would not

nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp I nbsp find myself more and more depressed by the news about the church including the increasing tendency to blame the media for the church s problems as if without The Boston Globe nbsp the Catholic church

It is one of the most confounding conundrums faced by anyone in the public spotlight How to defend without being defensive How to correct critical details without the appearance of nitpicking Finally how to deal with the media ndash which is the only way most people will come to know of the co

Cambridge MA I am privileged once again this year to be the scheduled celebrant at the Holy Thursday liturgy in the parish where I help out Our Lady of Sorrows in Sharon MA Be sure visit this wonderful parish when in the neighborhood I am pondering the shape of the liturgy in my mind and he

Two weeks ago I traveled to Anaheim California with three members of our staff for the annual Los Angeles Religious Education Congress Many friends of the magazine were there including Richard Gaillardetz from the University of Toledo who gave a talk provocatively titled Do We Need a Vatican

The sexual abuse crisis that continues to rock our church is about many things power secrecy sin crime stupidity sickness and so on nbsp nbsp One thing that it is not about is chastity nbsp While lay men and lay women not to mention parents would have doubtless done a better job at blo

At its deepest level the sexual abuse crisis and most especially the manner in which the hierarchy has responded to it entails profound cultural issues Yesterday I looked at two issues that were proximate to the crisis but today I would like to look at a couple of issues that are more deeply i