Those of you with somewhat long memories might remember the Jesuit mission bands groups nbsp of Jesuits who would nbsp visit a parish for a few days to offer a mission a kind of preached retreat usually in the evening designed for the men and women of a particular parish nbsp Busy lay men

Today is the Feast of Charles Lwanga and companions or the African martyrs or in Uganda the Ugandan martyrs nbsp I have a great devotion to the Ugandan martyrs having spent two years in East Africa where many Christian communities organizations and churches are dedicated to them nbsp B

In preparing a homily for the Feast of Corpus Christi this Sunday I reread two of my favorite passages about belief in the Eucharist which I thought I rsquo d share nbsp with any priests or deacons looking for some inspiration for a homily and nbsp with any Catholic eager to reflect on this grea

Greg Boyle S J founder of Homeboy Industries and author of Tattoos on the Heart which we reviewed here nbsp in our piece Hope for Homies was interviewed on May 20 on NPR s Fresh Air with Terry Gross Back in April he was also a guest on the America podcast As John Coleman S J repor

Today rsquo s front-page story in The New York Times Prospective Catholic Priests Face Sexuality Hurdles by Paul Vitello about the exclusion and weeding out of gay men from seminaries and religious formation houses made for depressing reading nbsp Why depressing nbsp Several reasons First

nbsp The Rev John Meier professor of New Testament at Notre Dame nbsp is one of my heroes nbsp Over the past few years I ve read each of the volumes of his indispensable A Marginal Jew nbsp a multivolume work still rolling out nbsp on the historical Jesus nbsp If you want to kn

It isn rsquo t every day that I come upon a word that I don rsquo t know nbsp Not that I rsquo m some sort of super-genius or a wordsmith like the late William Safire or even a crossword puzzle maven who finishes the Sunday Times rsquo puzzle in ink nbsp I can barely finish it in pencil nb

An unusually long astute nbsp and searching pastoral letter from Mark Coleridge archbishop of Canberra and Goulborn in Australia on sexual abuse nbsp He lists several factors among others behind the abuse Oslash nbsp One factor was a poor understanding and communication of the Church rsqu

We were able to snag a preview copy of the new HBO drama The Special Relationship airing nbsp this Saturday which stars Michael Sheen as again Tony Blair and Dennnis Quaid as Bill Clinton nbsp The show looks at the complicated political and personal relationship between the two with a stand

Grant Gallicho over at Dotcommonweal--in response to Bill Donohue s having apparently convinced himself that the sex abuse crisis is about gay priests--provides a master class in analyzing the John Jay study data Yet Donohue thinks that because 81 percent of the victims were male the real cause wa