No More Nukes?: A new movement argues it is time to finally ban the bomb.
There is an oddly anachronistic feel to talk about the abolition of nuclear weapons. Like watching Civil Defense films of the 1960s, contemporary calls to ban the bomb provoke a disorienting déjà vu, recalling a different, more paranoid and dangerous time. After all, with the Cold War over—s
Changing Hearts: Four ways Pope Francis is transforming church life
Catholicism is undergoing an epochal transformation. For more than a millennium dogma has been the hard core of church life, defining who is in and who is out. Partisans have fought over the correct way to define Christian belief; they condemned their opponents and persecuted them as heretics.In thi
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
While Fr. Malone is away, Michael Rossmann, S.J., introduces readers to The Jesuit Post.
Editorials
Preventing a Nuclear Iran
Today negotiators in Vienna announced a deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program.
Faith in Focus
In Defense of Altar Girls: Lessons learned while serving at Mass
It is a Sunday morning in 1992, and I am 10 years old and visiting relatives in the midwest. We head to church, pile into a pew, sit, stand and then sing the entrance hymn at Mass. I happen to look up from my missalette just as two girls who are about my age walk up the…
Books
To The Barricades!
‘Massacre,’ by John Merriman
Entrepreneurial Evangelist
‘America’s Pastor,’ by Grant Wacker
Answering the Unspeakable
‘The Clergy Sex Abuse Crisis and the Legal Responses,’ by James T. O’Reilly
Film
Based On A True Story: What biopics get right
What biopics get right
Poetry
Gli Indifferenti
The lady of the cleanersdoesn’t care.She really doesn’t care.She writes your fatein a steamed infernoand presses with despair.Three pins in mouth—Judas, Cassius, Brutus,—she greets you lowand points with tail,like Cerberus,to where the stainedand spotted go.“Come again,
The Word
Same as It Ever Was?
In the Talking Heads song ldquo Once in a Lifetime rdquo the refrain repeats over and over ldquo Same as it ever was same as it ever was rdquo Whether the refrain is meant to reflect the constancy of sameness or the inevitability of change is an open question There is in life a tension…
Columns
A Prayer for El Salvador
Archbishop Oscar Romero had as many enemies in death as in life.
Current Comment
Current Comment
Senate passed human trafficking bill held up for months by partisan fight over abortion
Faith
In Defense of Altar Girls: Lessons learned while serving at Mass
It is a Sunday morning in 1992, and I am 10 years old and visiting relatives in the midwest. We head to church, pile into a pew, sit, stand and then sing the entrance hymn at Mass. I happen to look up from my missalette just as two girls who are about my age walk up the…
Called to Be Saints: Why I support the canonization of Dorothy Day
I once heard Dorothy say, “When they call you a saint, it means basically that you are not to be taken seriously.”
Philosopher's Notebook
The Great Crime
Observers of the anti-Armenian campaign quickly noted its genocidal nature.
Signs Of the Times
Death in Lahore
Nauman Masih, a 14-year-old Pakistani Christian doused with gasoline and set afire by a group of Muslim attackers, passed away on April 15 in Lahore. The boy had been stopped and assaulted after confirming he was a Christian. The attack was allegedly in retaliation for the lynching by Christians of
Campaign Christianity
Public declarations of faith by U.K. politicians have not gone down well with British voters.
Death Toll on the Mediterranean Rises as E.U. Response Falters
Pope Francis has appealed to the international community to take swift and decisive action to avoid more tragedies as the migrant crisis in the southern Mediterranean worsens by the day. In the latest catastrophic episode, as many as 900 migrants appear to have drowned on April 19. Migrants had rush
Welcoming Iran Deal
Bishop Oscar Cantú of Las Cruces, N.M., chair of the Committee on International Justice and Peace of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, urged Congress to give the “Lausanne framework,” concluded by U.S. and E.U. negotiators with Iran, a chance. His letter arrived on April 14 as U.
News Briefs
Pope Francis is considering the possibility of visiting Cuba in September, before or after his trip to the United States, the Vatican said on April 17. • Parents of Martin Richard, the 8-year-old boy killed in the Boston Marathon bombings of April 2013, called on the government on April 17 to e
Cardinal Francis George Completes His ‘Ministry of Unity’
‘A bishop stands for Christ, the head of the church,” Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George said to Mary Ann Walsh, R.S.M., America’s U.S. Church correspondent, in one of his last interviews. “What he faces is always tied to that vocational understanding. It means that
L.C.W.R. Report Issued
Pope Francis spent 50 minutes with a delegation from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious on April 16. The symbolic encounter came after the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the L.C.W.R. announced that they had reached a positive conclusion to a three-year effor
State of the Question
State of the Question
Editor’s Note: In “Why Go to Mass?” (4/13), Mary Ann Walsh, R.S.M., wrote, “To evoke lively conversations, ask why so many Catholics no longer go to Mass.” We did that, and because of the volume of responses, this week’s Reply All is dedicated to that topic.Listen
Vatican Dispatch
When Francis Talks
Francis calls on world leaders to stop persecution in the Middle East.
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts