On Nov. 20, 1581, the British Jesuit Edmund Campion, along with two others, was tried and found guilty of high treason. As he refused to abjure his faith or his priesthood, Queen Elizabeth I ordered him to be hanged, drawn and quartered. A man of deep Christian charity and missionary zeal, this mart

Even without the worries related to Sept. 11, we are a people under stress—pressured by the daily grind. How we cope, and to what extent we succeed, is an individual mater. Job security, economic stability, family and health matters usually top the list of stress inducers. No wonder health and

As this issue goes to press, we are a little over three weeks removed from the day terror struck. It has been a time of intense and widespread prayer on both small and grand scales. We hear people constantly talking about faith, about the comfort they find knowing that God hears. Such was a conversa

Sept. 11, 2001, will forever be etched in the consciousness of all living Americans, but assuredly in a unique way for New Yorkers and Washingtonians. In New York, a variant of the question, “Where were you when the lights went out?” is asked and pondered citywide. For me, the answer is

Among my most cherished childhood memories are visits to the local branch of Queens Borough Public Library, where peace and quiet reignedexcept for the occasional chair squeaking across the floor, or the loud whisperer, or the crashing book, which violations of the peace were dutifully corrected by

If you are like me, you resent having your name on everyone’s mailing list, receiving direct mail of all sorts, mostly junk, and sometimes having your dinner hour interrupted with telephone solicitations. The scrupulous among us, however, not wanting to miss out on that one, real, authentic of

Did you know that: William Styron (The Confessions of Nat Turner, 1967, Pulitzer Prize; Sophie’s Choice, 1979, American Book Award; et al.) was able to read at age five and was publishing short stories as an adolescent? Agatha Christie’s first mystery, published in 1920, sold only 2,000

According to a recent newsletter of the Administration on Aging, I have something in common with 12 million Americans. I’m a caregiver. The great majority of us are women (75 percent, the A.O.A. reports). Half of us also work outside the home. This caregiving business is really booming. As the

If you pay close attention, you will come upon the word (or concept) model in some form or other on many pages of this week’s issue. Although it is a familiar concept, in my opinion we don’t hear about it nearly as much as we ought. Writers have lamented in these pages and elsewhere: Whe

The day after Cardinal O’Connor’s death I received a package delivered by U.P.S. It was from Alba House (Society of St. Paul) and contained a copy of their newest publication, The Life and Times of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. The author, Myles P. Murphy, is a New York archdiocesan priest