American Catholics have persisted in viewing both U S secular and church history as primarily a movement of Northern European people and institutions westward across the barren plains But the deeper truth that inexorably is catching up with us is that it is also increasingly the history of movem
Last month students in my class on women and Catholicism spent an evening at a Catholic Worker House in South Bend Ind We prepared a meal shared it with the guests and listened to an after-dinner talk by Margaret Pfeil a staff member at the house and my colleague at Notre Dame Pfeil spoke abou
Hope involves wishing and waiting for something that has a chance of becoming a reality The Scripture readings for the Second Sunday of Advent enable us to see what is important and distinctive in the biblical understanding of hope God is the origin ground and goal of hope They also remind us th
I still remember the day, back in 1953, when Mt. Everest was conquered. At the time there was great rejoicing, as Edmund Hilary and Sherpa Tensing set the first human footsteps upon the virgin snows of the mountain’s peak. It was many years later that I heard the story of how differently the t
Sentencing SaddamWhen a court in Baghdad found Saddam Hussein guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to death by hanging, President George W. Bush hailed the verdict as a milestone in the Iraqi people’s efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law and a vindication
U.S. Policy Challenges Church Aid WorkersThe U.S. government’s policy of no contact with Hamas leaders has complicated church aid workers’ duties in the Palestinian territories, said an official of Catholic Relief Services. The United States lists Hamas as a terrorist organization, and d