Thomas Merton spent almost half his life in the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. Strict silence was an integral part of the Trappist way of life when he entered in 1941. Merton took readily to the rule of strict silence, but circumvented it when necessary. By the mi
Buffalo, frigid northern city of—refugees? Yes, refugees. I spent a week in Buffalo last June helping out in a small Jesuit parish, St. Ann’s, located in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Among the first issues the pastor told me about was the struggle of refugees and asylum
The Boston Globe began publishing on Jan. 6, 2002, a series of reports regarding sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Boston. In a flash, newspapers around the country began reprinting the Globe’s reports and developing their own. They published 728 stories in January, 1,0
The first cold day of the approaching winter found me at the Hoboken Shelter in New Jersey, the only shelter in that rapidly gentrifying city across the Hudson River from Manhattan (www.hobokenshelter.org). Housed in a 19th-century Lutheran church, the shelter has had as its guiding spirit for three
Long-Suffering People
In the whirligig of Philippine politics, faceless power brokers in the shadows are constantly trying to destabilize the elected government (Current Comment, 4/24).
When the maverick Col. Gregorio Gringo Honasan led the final coup attempt against then-
As the nation moves beyond the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, difficult choices lie ahead. While it has become increasingly clear that the war in Iraq has not made the United States more secure or the world a safer place, future U.S. policy in Iraq is not nearly as clear. Would the prema
Iraq receives all the headlines these days. But the truth is there is a war being waged in the homeland, a battleground in nursing homes across the country. In the past five months my mother has been in three of them as her health and self-reliance deteriorate. The latest is a 13-floor monolith wher