Notre Dame is a world unto itself - a place apart Unlike Georgetown University or Boston College where students can get away from campus and wash off their school colors in the secular currents of Wisconsin Avenue or Commonwealth Avenue for a day or a night every night if they want Notre Dame s

In 1918 the German religion scholar Friedrich Heiler published his great phenomenological study of prayer which for all its merits and sympathy for prayer was flawed by his rigid separation of prayer from ritual gesture folk custom and icon Heiler rsquo s restrictive methodology did not come

Has the pluribus in the vaunted boast begun to submerge even eradicate the unum America has become Robert Wuthnow the director of Princeton University rsquo s Center for the Study of American Religion argues in this new book a more religiously diverse nation Buddhist and Hindu temples and Mo

It is no secret that in the last 40 years there has been a steep decline in the number of clergy working in parishes as well as religious congregations staffing schools and other Catholic institutions In parishes the women and men filling the roles once performed exclusively by clergy and religiou

These books are the first two titles in The Ignatian Impulse Series a new series offered by Ave Maria Press ldquo By providing brief readable and engaging books rdquo the publisher tells us the series ldquo presents the spirituality of Ignatius of Loyola as a practical resource for spiritual

ldquo But what if Scola becomes pope rdquo Such was my e-mail response to America rsquo s request that I do this book review John Paul II had just died Benedict XVI had yet to be elected And Angelo Cardinal Scola was on the papabile list Needless to say Scola the patriarch of Venice did not