The world of Catholic-Jewish relations is far, far better today than it was when I was growing up in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, where Jews were the overwhelming majority. Sure, as a youngster I had some Italian, Polish, Puerto Rican and Russian friends, but I didn’t know they w
Two nights before Thanksgiving, and no president-elect yet. A remarkable turn of events! Morning news anchors, cable-television pundits and op-ed sages insist that Americans are demanding a quick end to the madness. A quick end? Madness? Why, I don’t know a soul who feels that way! Most people
It seems as if every complicated moral issue sooner or later becomes a legal issue, at least in the United States. Consider, for example, the recent tobacco litigation. The moral question is whether tobacco companies should profit by selling such a dangerous product. This moral question immediately
While the number of refugees who are residing in a foreign country dropped worldwide in the 1990’s, during the same period civil wars, government repression and other forms of social violence led to a dramatic increase in the number of persons displaced within their own countries. In Sudan alo
Is there anything more central to our existence than hope? And when it is denied, is there anything more disheartening? There is a poignant moment in Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man when the nameless black narrator realizes he is bereft of hope: I am invisible, understand, simply because p
There it was, Baltimore’s huge gulag of a jail and prison complex covering two and a half city blocks. I was looking at it from the northeast corner of St. Ignatius Church, where I was to give a talk on prison ministry that Monday evening; the sight served as a useful if painful inward prepara
Choices More WorthyI want to thank America for the attention you have brought to the pledge Renewing the Mind of the Media (11/11) and for John McCarthy’s excellent explication of the mind of the U.S. bishops in asking that this pledge be taken on Dec. 17 this year and on World Communications