Cardinal Robert Sarah caused a rumpus this summer by proposing that the Catholic Church return to the practice of priest and people praying in the same direction during the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
Guest Columnists
Good News for Churchgoing Women
TEN YEARS AGO, I wrote a column called “The Health Benefits of Going to Church.” In it, I reviewed two studies that examined whether attendance at religious services could be beneficial for overall health.
Joe Biden Is Father Isaac Hecker’s Fault?
U.S. Catholics generally know little about the Church’s history in our country. But whether you’re trying to fill gaps in your knowledge or just looking for a good read, let me recommend Russell Shaw’s “Catholics in America – Religious Identity and Cultural Assimilation from John Carroll to Flannery O’Connor” (Ignatius Press).
God and Brexit
I’d like to suggest another, perhaps deeper, answer to the question of the EU’s current distress: to put it bluntly, the “democracy deficit” is a reflection of Europe’s “God-deficit.”
The Washington Post and the ‘Church of Me’
After decades of grumbling about the Washington Post’s gross ignorance about matters Catholic, it occurred to me that the problem is that the Post supports a competing religion: the Church of Me.
Trump, Kaine and More Illusions
American Catholics for whom the noun, not the adjective, is determinative are thus faced with a brutal fact: our deeply wounded political culture has produced two impossible options in the 2016 Republican and Democratic tickets.
Homelessness, Party-style
I grew up in what you might call a genetically Democratic family, but one in which partisan heterodoxy was not uncommon. My parents voted for Dwight D. Eisenhower twice, for Richard M. Nixon in 1960 and for the occasional Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Maryland.
Recognizing That All Lives Matter
For three years, I worked for an organization in Nebraska that was dedicated to abolishing the death penalty. It was thrilling when we won. After a hard-fought battle and years of disappointment, our legislature did away with capital punishment.
The Ostpolitik Failed; Get Over It
The default positions guiding Vatican diplomacy these days badly need re-setting. That re-set must begin with a frank recognition that, whatever its intentions, Ostpolitik was a failure.
The Virtue Deficit in US Political Culture
Had I the resources, the one new book I’d give every delegate to the national political conventions meeting later this month is James Traub’s masterful biography, “John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit” (Basic Books). Traub grabs your attention quickly, seven sentences in: “[Adams] did not aim to please, and he largely succeeded.”