If there’s one thing that will remind a woman she is, at her core, no different from the rest of humanity, it is childbirth. From the second that first ‘is-it-real-or-is-it-a-phantom?’ contraction set in until the exhilarating moment when her son was urged and cajoled and squeezed from her weary body, Kate Middleton would have understood Read more
“Listen to the words,” the young woman behind me stage-whispered to her chatty date. “Are you listening?” He wasn’t. But I was and so was most of the rapt, standing-room-only crowd that crammed the Greek Theatre at University of California, Berkeley, for the second of three sold-out Mumford & Sons concerts in late May. This Read more
Glory is the preserve of the patriotic American. Never was this belief more obvious than when Rolling Stone dared to publish on the cover of its latest edition a photograph of the alleged Boston bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The photograph — a face-on profile of the young, good-looking Chechen, his hair tousled, his chin stubbled — Read more
Paris Jackson, the 15-year-old daughter of the late singer Michael Jackson, cut her wrists and swallowed a bottle of pills June 6. As she recovers, one in six high school students will seriously consider ending their lives. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is the third leading cause of death for Read more
I have been asked at this meeting of the Australian Jesuits and our companions on the journey to explain why I love the Catholic Church despite all the woes we are suffering as a social institution at the moment. I love the Church because it is the privileged space where people can share their deepest Read more
It began when the Pope paid his bill. The day after Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was named the leader of the world’s billion Catholics, he asked his driver to go back to the hotel in the Vatican where he’d been staying during the Congress of Cardinals, to pay his bill. The payment was completely symbolic Read more
It was a shipwreck of African migrants off the coast of Lampedusa, a small island in the Mediterranean, that spurred Pope Francis into action. In the past 18 months more than 500 people have died, or gone missing at sea, trying to escape Africa. The world barely noticed. Standing on Lampedusa on Monday, Francis prayed Read more
Oscar Romero, now back on the path to sainthood, was called to conversion by ordinary Salvadorans. Among the welcome news coming on the heels of Pope Francis’ election was an April announcement that the canonization cause of Archbishop Óscar Romero of El Salvador has been, in the words of Italian Msgr. Vincenzo Paglia, who leads Read more
Have you ever told someone sincerely, “I’ll pray for you!” and then wondered, “Oh no. What have I done?” You have the best intention of praying for them, but you feel like you don’t know how. I’ve been there, too! Until this past semester, in fact. Up until then, if I wanted to pray for Read more
I’m dealing with the death of my father the way I deal with most things: by thinking, and processing those thoughts through writing, fingers to keyboard. Given my philosophical bent, these thoughts wander from his particular death to mortality in general. That might strike you as cold, excessively rational, analytic. But the only rule about Read more