Social media is increasingly making teens dissatisfied with their appearance and obsessed with achieving a filtered version of “perfection,” even going so far as to pursue plastic surgery, say medical professionals. Dr. Neelam Vashi, director of Ethnic Skin Center at Boston University’s School of Medicine, published an article analyzing the new trend in Jama Facial Read more
Every Monday morning for the past 30 years, members of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker community in Washington, D.C. have been making their way across the Potomac River to pray and nonviolently witness for peace in front of the most symbolic war planning, war-making headquarters on earth: the Pentagon. On August 6 – the 73rd Read more
It was July 29, 1968. The world seemed to be in turmoil. The Paris student riots had happened a month before. I was an army chaplain at Puckapunyal preparing conscripts for Vietnam and, at the same time, an undergraduate at Melbourne University where the Vietnam War was taboo. Those two worlds were a universe apart. Read more
When you’ve been married as long as my husband and I have, to speculate on what it would be like to be a single person is almost too fantastical. Or worse, when we imagine divorce or death, we horrify each other with the prospect of going on a first date with someone else. We dated Read more
In the 100 years after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, Māori land and the commerce they conducted on it were devastated. Poverty followed and the introduction of new, foreign diseases ravaged the Māori population. Over the past 25 years, the Government and iwi across New Zealand have been working to acknowledge the historical grievances. In most cases, Read more
Located in the Tarn region of southern France, the Archdiocese of Albi has been divided into 503 parishes since the Middle Ages. Over the Pentecost weekend, however, Archbishop Jean Legrez, (pictured) completely re-organized them into 21 new parishes. It is an impressive change. In coming to this decision, the Archdiocese of Albi has followed a Read more
When Pope Francis comes to Ireland in two weeks’ time it will be 39 years since the last visit by a head of the Catholic Church. Since then the status of the church in Ireland has declined dramatically. Those identifying as Catholic are down by 20 per cent, according to the last census. Mass attendance Read more
This morning comes breaking news out of NCR, that Washington DC’s Cardinal Donald Wuerl has proposed a “national panel” to investigate any serious allegation made against Bishops. And the panel would be comprised of, wait for it…bishops. “Would we have some sort of a panel, a board, of bishops … where we would take it Read more
The term “LGBT” was recently used for the first time in a Vatican document. The working document setting the agenda for the Synod on the Youth taking place next Fall notes, “Some LGBT youth…wish to benefit from greater closeness and experience greater care by the Church.” Sister Monica Astorga, an Argentinian Discalced Carmelite Nun, has Read more
For those who often saw the cardinal archbishop of Buenos Aires at anti-death penalty gatherings in the years before he became pope, his move to formally change official church teaching on the issue will have come as no surprise. The official Vatican declaration that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on Read more