Most Americans were in a party mood on New Year’s Eve two years ago. Although they had been admonished that 2000 was, properly speaking, the closing year of the 20th century, they generally celebrated its first day as the start of a new millenniumand celebrated with carefree exuberance. There

Our Christmas cover this year, painted by Ansgar Holmberg, C.S.J., depicts children from around the world adoring the infant Jesus. When Sister Ansgar first mailed us a rough draft of this painting, she wondered: Should Jesus be receiving the world from us, or should he be offering it to us?Christ d

Since Sept. 11 not a day has passed without reminders of the tragedy being thrust before us. Grief, loss and mourning remain part of our national consciousness, like a dull ache that sometimes becomes acute. Advent, Christmas and the coming of a new year, the first without lost loved ones, will be a

Military tribunals have been around for a long time in the United States, and they have often been controversial. The very idea of such courts is now provoking dissent both here and abroad. On Nov. 13 President Bush signed an executive order permitting individuals who are accused of terrorism and ar

The pastoral message Living With Faith and Hope After September 11, which the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued during its meeting in mid-November in Washington, D.C., promises to be a landmark document. It certainly provides inspiring material for preaching in the months ahead, as

Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist, must have found Oct. 26 a gratifying day. That Friday morning his column, under the heading We Are All Alone, expressed sharp criticism of what Mr. Friedman considers to be footdragging by most members of the antiterrorist coalition.That evening, Jim Lehr

Amnesty International’s wide-ranging report, Torture Worldwide, was issued last fall, but it remains sadly current as new accounts of torture continue to come to light through Amnesty and other organizations, like Human Rights Watch. In May, for example, the latter documented the torture of et

We sometimes imagine that the besieged and occasionally violent form of religiosity known as fundamentalism is a uniquely Islamic trait. This is not the case. As Karen Armstrong has written, fundamentalism is a global fact and has surfaced in every major faith in response to the problems of modernit

Christians believe there is life after death, but that does not mean they take death lightly. Like everyone else, they learn sooner or later why St. Paul called death the last enemy to be destroyed. Paul also said that Christians should not mourn for those who have died like people who have no hope,

From 2001, a warning that the war on terrorism would not be won with bullets alone