Can the Church Be Healed?
In recent weeks, dioceses all across the United States have re-examined their policies on clergy misconduct, as priests across the country have been removed from parish duty because of their derelictions. Media coverage of these events has encouraged the faithful to wonder and to question.Among both
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
Suddenly everyone is an expert on celibacy. Suddenly everyone is an expert on the priesthood. Suddenly everyone is an expert on gay priests. Or more accurately, suddenly everyone is happy to talk about the Catholic Church, no matter how little they know about Catholicism.Maureen Dowd, in a hateful c
Letters
Letters
Not Deterred
The article Guatemala’s Violent Peace, by Robert B. Gilbert, (3/25) must have tugged at the heart of every New York Sister of Charity as we recall with sorrow the assassination of our sister, Barbara Ann Ford, on May 5 of last year.
Barbara had served the poor of Guatemala for almost 20 years as a…
Editorials
Punishing the Church
Sexual abuse by priests has done untold harm to innocent children and adolescents who were physically, psychologically and spiritually damaged by people they should have been able to trust and respect. Outrage at these crimes has been directed not only at the perpetrators but also at those church of
Features
Keeping pedophiles out of the priesthood
A major problem now exists for the future of priestly vocations because of “the alliteration of priest and pedophile.”
Five misconceptions about child sexual abuse and the Catholic Church
Child sexual abuse, in the priesthood and in society at large, is a complex issue that does not admit of simple understandings or simple solutions.
Books
Meanwhile, Back in Albany…
In a new book of essays entitled Reading William Kennedy Syracuse University Press Michael Patrick Gillespie writes that Kennedy rsquo s novels are infused with Catholic dogma however a broad more diverse ethical system than that articulated in The Baltimore Catechism informs his writing That
Special Sisters in Antebellum South
At the close of the 19th century a religious sister in New Orleans left to her sisters and to future generations a written history of the community to which she belonged What is unusual is that this history was written by a black woman a member of a community of black sisters founded before the
Orphaned by the Superpowers
The major culprit for the disasters in Africa is none other than foreign involvement claims the distinguished journalist Mark Huband First came the European colonialists who delineated territories according to their political interests and then either created or exploited cultural differences am
The Word
Christians, Recognize Your Dignity
As the Easter cycle moves to Ascension and Pentecost the readings foreshadow the ongoing life of the church Acts describes an early conflict in the community and the choice of seven men filled with the Spirit One is Stephen who immediately afterward is put to death This leads to the spread of t
Columns
Jigsaw Therapy
Spring break, in our mountainous part of the country, does not always coincide with spring. The chill of winter often lingers past the vernal equinox. Today, for example, it is snowing on our poor, tentative tulip shoots. The wind is at war with forward progress, and the ice on the road has kept us
News
Signs of the Times
Seminary Enrollment UpU.S. Catholic theological seminaries enrolled 101 more students this year than last year, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate said. The figure rose from 3,483 in the 2000-01 academic year to 3,584 in 2001-02. It marked the fifth straight year of increases and the
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Vatican
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Podcasts