The novelist Richard Ford, in an opinion piece in The New York Times on Sept. 4, ruminating on the devastation of his home town, called New Orleans a city beyond the reach of empathy. For a while it looked that way. On Aug. 25, 2005, the people of New Orleans were told to evacuate their city. If the
Where will the next great battle be fought in the struggle for the hearts and minds of the American public regarding abortion? Perhaps it will be ignited by the recent proposal of a law that would oblige abortion providers to tell women about the pain that unborn children experience during this proc
For two extraordinary days in the summer of 2004, 175 religious and lay leaders gathered in Philadelphia to wrestle with the future of the Catholic Church in this country. The site of the conference - the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania - could not have been more appropriate, given
New Orleans was the first city that felt like family to me, and because I had moved so much growing up, family was the only thing I understood as home. A year after I graduated from Loyola University New Orleans, I was in New York City serving a volunteer year and planning to move back as soon as I
A church purified and humbled, yet more resolved to carry on Christ’s work—that is how I would describe the Diocese of Tucson as it emerges from the process of Chapter 11 federal bankruptcy reorganization. The bankruptcy process, ending with a plan of reorganization confirmed by the judg
Getting out of New Orleans has never been as easy as getting in. The city has too much magnetic charm. At least it used to. Expecting in this case, however, that getting back in might be harder than getting out, my Jesuit community and I had decided to ride out Hurricane Katrina at our downtown chur
The cedars of Lebanon have experienced the axes of many civilizations upon their trunks over the centuries. Conquerors have repeatedly invaded the land, reigned over its inhabitants and reaped its fruits. Time and again, however, the Lebanese have managed to be reborn from the ashes. Today they rise