A pastor in full
Almost a quarter-century ago, Father Jay Scott Newman, back in Rome to finish a graduate degree after his priestly ordination in Charleston, took me on an extended ramble around the […]
perspective
perspective
The 2018 Summer Reading List
The vacation season is an opportunity to escape TwitterWorld and do some serious reading. These books will help make your summer enjoyable, instructive, or both. Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s […]
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The smoke over medical marijuana
A comprehensive 2015 scientific review found medical marijuana to be useful only for a small number of medical conditions. Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, an international team […]
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Finding Peter
On November 24, 2013, Pope Francis displayed St. Peter’s bones publicly for the first time. This momentous occasion culminated the incredible 70-year process of discovery and authentication of the relics. […]
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Love and mercy: A Christian response to suicide
Two high profile suicides in four days. Awful. In the wake of the deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, my Facebook feed has been filled with various musings and […]
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Acts and us
The Church’s custom of reading virtually all of the Acts of the Apostles at daily Mass during the Easter season struck me as particularly apt this year, and for three […]
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Homelands and social doctrines
With hundreds of bishops coming to the Vatican in October 2001 for a Synod, I decided to spend that month in Rome conducting interviews for what would eventually become the […]
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After the Irish debacle
I wasn’t surprised by the result of Ireland’s May 25 referendum, which opened a path to legal abortion in the Emerald Isle by striking down a pro-life amendment to the […]
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Helpful guidelines for the spiritual life
“You are anxious and troubled about many things, but only one thing is necessary.” We recognize Jesus’ response to the busy Martha in these words (Luke 10:41-42), but can we […]
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Consenting to Sex
Recent news articles exploring the post-#MeToo world of romance have noted the phenomenon of cell phone “consent apps,” allowing millennials to sign digital contracts before they have sex with their […]
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Prayer: anchor in storm of distractions
Did you know that we see hundreds if not thousands of advertisements a day? In fact, the consensus among marketing researchers is that you might see or hear as many […]
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Craving approval isn’t evangelization
The bizarre comment and the weird gesture have not, until recently, been associated with high-ranking churchmen. Both, alas, were on vivid display last month when Cardinals Reinhard Marx and Gianfranco […]
