by Father Robert Lauder, AT THIS TIME of year when we celebrate the holiday in honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. we have a special opportunity to reflect on the nature of prejudice and perhaps to examine our consciences to see if we are guilty of this sin. Almost 50 years ago I […]

Father Robert Lauder OCCASIONALLY a friend will ask me if I experience a great deal of pressure trying to write a weekly column. I confess that when I started writing columns 40 years ago, I did feel a considerable amount of pressure. When I accepted my first editor’s invitation to write a weekly column, I […]

by Father Robert Lauder Fifteenth in a series WHEN I FIRST began to read Father Michael Paul Gallagher’s  Faith Maps: Ten Religious Explorers from Newman to Joseph Ratzinger (New York: Paulist Press, 2010, 158 pages, $16.95), I was surprised to find the author Flannery O’Connor’s name among the theologians whose thought Father Gallagher summarizes and […]

by Father Robert Lauder Thirteenth in a series ONE OF THE humorous experiences that I have had may be one that many teachers have. A former student approaches me and says what a great teacher I am and how much he learned from my lectures. As I am about to swell with pride, the student […]

by Father Robert Lauder Twelfth in a series THOUGH I HAD read at least one book by Hans Urs von Balthasar and in recent years learned from some students of theology that he had become a favorite theologian among large groups of contemporary Catholics, I knew little about his theology until I read Father Michael […]

by Father Robert Lauder Eleventh in a series HANS URS VON Balthasar began his academic career by looking for hidden traces of Christ in literary works. When I learned this from Father Michael Paul Gallagher’s Faith Maps: Ten Religious Explorers from Newman to Joseph Ratzinger (New York: Paulist Press, 2010, 158 pages, $16.95), I felt […]