nbsp Catholics today are confronting horrible revelations of clerical abuse Will this ongoing scandal change our church Yes undoubedly this encounter with dreadful home truths is already changing us The sickening revulsion we have felt toward accounts of distant concentration camps torture ch

I once heard Pope John Paul II spiritedly identify himself as the ldquo feminist Pope rdquo He was addressing our group who were participating in a Vatican conference devoted to women rsquo s health nbsp Now many years later a Vatican CDF admonition arrives warning against ldquo radical femini

nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp I rsquo ve been arguing against moral anger ever since the day Dorothy Day chided me in a letter ldquo But isn rsquo t anger a sin rdquo At that period I was arguing that feminists should cultivate anger as a means to energize nbsp the struggle for women s equality

Can answered prayers be disconcerting nbsp Saturday morning I encountered a minor disaster After taking the 7 23 a m train to the city to attend a NYU Bioethics conference on The Moral Brain I found the subway stop closed for construction To get out of the rain and save time I jumped into a ta

On Friday March 9 The New York Times ran a full page ad by the Freedom From Religion Foundation In an open letter addressed to ldquo liberal and nominal rdquo Catholics they were told that now is the time ldquo to quit the Roman Catholic Church rdquo nbsp The implication is that Catholics on

Do some human beings just die and that rsquo s it nbsp Two highly respected theologians I have been reading lately propose that the afterlife may not happen for everyone nbsp Their books affirm and support the reality of Christ rsquo s resurrection and his promise of eternal life for Christians

I received a call recently asking me for comment on the ongoing disagreements of the Catholic Bishops with the administration over health care coverage for contraception nbsp My interviewer was seeking support for the government rsquo s position and she was surprised to find that so many ldquo pr

Downton Abbey addiction has arrived here if a bit belatedly nbsp I missed the first season since I normally never watch television and hadn rsquo t gotten the word of its pleasures nbsp But with the help of my TV DVD competent granddaughter I am now up to speed What a treat It rsquo s equal t

I just read about something called a ldquo premortem rdquo and found it intriguing It rsquo s a technique devised by psychologist Gary Klein to help groups make better decisions Unfortunately as we all know groups are subject to groupthink and overconfidence Once an idea is put on the table no

nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp On this Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the season of Advent we can share our own special Marian stories nbsp nbsp Mine takes place decades ago on a night when I was desperately praying to Mary for help nbsp As my pleas continued I began to vividly experie