Without dismissing the importance of other leaders in the history of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, it is fair to say that Dorothy Day remains, at the dawn of the new millennium, the radical conscience of American Catholicism.
The first lecture I ever gave on the topic of the church’s magisterium was given in Latin to my students at the Gregorian University more than 40 years ago. Little did I think then that one day the Latin word magisterium would become so commonly used, at least by Catholics, that I could give a
When I was an English teacher in public high schools in the decade from 1957 to 1967, one issue I took to heart was the question of my own role in affecting the values of my students. There was hardly a piece of American or English literature in the high school curriculum that didn’t lead to t
While serving as the deputy chaplain of the U.S. Marine Corps, with supervisory responsibility for some 250 chaplains from some 60 different faith groups, I was discouraged by the disproportionate number of Catholic chaplains who were committing offenses that resulted either in their imprisonment or
Architects can poison your faith. I found that out between 1960 and 1962, when I lived in a huge seminary the Jesuits had recently built about an hour’s drive north of New York City. The seminary was what Le Corbusier once called a “machine for living”; it had all the charm of Sovi
CorrectionThank you for highlighting Catholic Relief Services in your editorial “Americans Abroad” (7/30), as an agency that successfully addresses the Holy Father’s concerns about global solidarity, and which partners with the U.S. government to encourage its efforts at reducing g
In a speech to the nation televised from his Texas ranch on Aug. 9, President Bush discussed a moral question that for the past several months has preoccupied both him and many of his fellow citizens: should federal taxpayer dollars be used for research on stem cells that have been derived from livi