Sex, Truth and the Illumination of Guilt

by Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk Guilt has gotten a lot of bad press recently. We live in an age where guilt is practically always something bad, something to get past with the help of a shrink. Particularly when discussing sex, people will declare that religion and morality do nothing more than make people feel guilty. Andrew […]

JFK After 50 Years

by George Weigel ON NOV. 22, 1963, the seventh grade at Baltimore’s Cathedral School was in gym class when we got word that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. A half-hour later, while we were climbing the stairs back to 7B’s classroom, Sister Dolorine’s voice came over the public address system. She announced that […]

Stories of Spiritual Combat in WWII

by George Weigel THE REV. GEORGE William Rutler, S.T.D., a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, is a man of parts: graduate of Dartmouth, Oxford and Rome’s Angelicum (“the Dominican faculty that flunked Galileo,” he informs me); linguist, painter, violinist and boxer; and preacher extraordinaire. One of Catholicism’s most successful pastors, he has been […]

When Being Right Means Doing Wrong

by Erick Rommel PART OF BEING a parent involves responsibility. That means protecting and providing for a child. But as children grow, parents must help them transition from a person who is provided for into a person who can provide for herself, a person responsible enough to do the right thing. A great lesson illustrating […]

Hemrick

The Damaging Effects of Alcohol and Drugs

by Father Eugene F. Hemrick Should we turn our heads away, call the police or shut it down? These questions were posed in an article about Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler, who was photographed in a house full of young people attending a wild drinking party. Undoubtedly, excessive drinking is one of the greatest […]

‘Pilgrimage’ Offers Rome at Home

by George Weigel In the middle centuries of the first millennium, the Bishop of Rome celebrated the Eucharist with his people during Lent in a striking way. Each day, the pope would lead a procession of Roman clergy and laity from one church – the collecta, or gathering point – to another, the statio or […]

Special Graces When Close Friends Die

by Carol Powell The obituaries of Father James DiGiacomo and Regina Barry appeared in the same issue of The Tablet (Sept. 28). Both of them were personal friends of my family and me for many years. My husband, David, first met Father DiGiacomo when he was a high school Latin student in Brooklyn Prep. Father […]

The Church: Purified By Persecution

by George Weigel Each issue of the admirable ecumenical journal, Touchstone, includes a department called “The Suffering Church.” It’s a title that Catholics of a certain age associate with purgatory; in Touchstone’s vocabulary, however, “the Church suffering” is the Church being purified here and now by persecution. It’s a useful reminder of a hard fact. […]

Too Many Bullies in the World; Don’t Be One of Them

by Karen Dietlein Osborne Let’s be clear: People are not things. In general, things are to be used. You use a fork to eat. You use a cellphone to call your mother. You use a bus to get from Point A to Point B. Everyone uses things – computers, cars, restaurants, shoes. And I think […]

Looking Back over 50 Years

by Stephen Kent Ten U.S. presidents, six popes and several wars have come, and some gone, since we first met. Our most recent gathering marked the 50th anniversary of our graduation from what had been a small, all-male Jesuit university. There were the introductory social events at which we, from under balding heads and behind […]