by Dr. E. Barry Gordon, M.D. UNFORTUNATELY, THE “Ask the Doctor” column of Nov. 23 about the risks and benefits of testosterone therapy was as inaccurate and misleading as most media reports concerning testosterone. Here I can only address a few of the fallacies. The author made major reference to the recently publicized Veterans Administration […]
Guest Columnists
Ethical Parameters for High-Risk Pregnancies
by Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk AT THE BEGINING of December, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a sweeping federal lawsuit against the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops over its Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic hospitals and health care services, alleging that the directives, with their prohibition against direct abortion, resulted in negligent care of a […]
Rejoice! We’re Almost There!
by Sister Karen M. Cavanagh, C.S.J. Are we there yet? How much longer? In today’s technological world, we might not hear that question uttered aloud from a traveler. In a car, we can check the GPS. On a plane, we can track our travel, the miles flown and miles to go and know almost exactly […]
Books for Your Christmas Wish List
by George Weigel The flurry of instabooks published shortly after the election of Pope Francis didn’t shed much light on the formation, character and interests of Jorge Mario Bergoglio or the likely trajectory of his pontificate. Now comes something serious: “Pope Francis: Our Brother, Our Friend – Personal Recollections About the Man Who Became Pope,” […]
Finding Focus Amid Seasonal Distractions
by Father Eugene F. Hemrick AFTER EXPERIENCING Christmas for so many years, it’s easy for it to become “just another” Christmas. It makes me think of a quote by A.J. Conyers in his book, “The Listening Heart: Vocation and the Crisis of Modern Culture.” Conyers says the following: “To be modern is to exist increasingly […]
Men of Character in American Public Life
by George Weigel IN HIS 2008 BOOK, “The Faithful: A History of Catholics in America,” Boston College historian James M. O’Toole did a fine job of fleshing out the conventional U.S. Catholic story-line by emphasizing the role prominent lay men and women played in the Catholic experience in these United States. Yet there seemed to […]
Flannery O’Connor Is Not for Faint of Heart
by Effie Caldarola In Flannery O’Connor’s novel, “Wise Blood,” the protagonist senses Jesus moving “from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure.” I fell in love with that phrase long ago and imagined Jesus, intriguing, mysterious and persistent, flitting in and out of our consciousness, but at the end […]
Pope Is Charting the Church of the Future
by Cindy Wooden Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation (See Page 11) on sharing the joy of the Gospel is a call to faith-filled optimism, recognizing challenges but knowing that God’s love and lordship will prevail, said Archbishop Rino Fisichella, introducing the text to the media. The archbishop, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization, told […]
Fog Represents the Cloud of Unknowing
by John Garvey It was foggy this morning. I found it cozy. I always have. I love the fog. When I was a boy, we lived on a small lake in Pennsylvania. I liked to get up early to see the fog sitting on the bay. When the sun rose, it would roll out toward […]
Focused on the New Evangelization
by George Weigel There’s a lot for U.S. Catholics to be thankful for at Thanksgiving 2013: seminaries that have turned the corner from the doldrums of the immediate past and are now full, or getting close; a reform of the liturgical reform that is bringing a new sense of the sacred back to Catholic worship; […]