“People want to be their own theologians. People don’t just want to receive truth from an institution. They want to participate with a tradition and make a truth that is meaningful for their own lives.”

April 15, 2016

“The thing that’s dying is a kind of old allegiance to particular institutions or institutional manifestations of the divine. There’s just not much interest in that. The thing that seems to be coming alive is this awareness of God, a … More →

April 15, 2016

“There’s no abstract family. There’s no ideal family,” says Father Tom Reese, SJ, senior analyst at National Catholic Reporter. The pope, he adds, “is tired of the church being judgmental and laying down rules. Instead, he wants us to walk with these couples with compassion. Treat them as Jesus would treat them.” More →

April 8, 2016

In The Relevance of Religion: How Faithful People Can Change Politics, former Missouri senator John Danforth, an Episcopal priest, explores how an over-emphasis on religion has changed the tone of American politics and whether religious values can help to mend a badly fractured political system. More →

March 30, 2016

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is always a key stop for presidential candidates; does the Affordable Care Act burden the free exercise of religion; and they represent rebirth and the gladness of the resurrection.    

March 25, 2016

Amidst the clashes over Jewish values that took place during this week’s annual meeting of AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, one rabbi tried to find common ground: “America and Israel are built upon values: B’tzelem Elohim, everyone is created in the image of God; kavod habriyot, respect due to all God’s creations. Those are the values that these countries are built on,” said Rabbi David Paskin of the organization Come Together Against Hate. More →

March 25, 2016

“We Little Sisters of the Poor are a group of women who made religious vows to God. Now we find ourselves in a situation where the government is requiring us to make changes in our religious health care plan to include services that really violate our deepest held religious beliefs as Little Sisters,” says Sister Loraine Marie Maguire, Mother Provincial of the Little Sisters of the Poor. But Gretchen Borchelt, vice president for reproductive rights and health at the National Women’s Law Center, says, “Women deserve insurance coverage for birth control  no matter  where they work.” More →

March 25, 2016

Easter becomes “a very thin, generic festival,” says author Rev. Fleming Rutledge, without “looking into the grave and then saying we rejoice with the risen Christ.” Only then, she says, can flowers “give us the gladness that comes with the unrepeatable quality of the resurrection.” More →

March 25, 2016

With the approval of plans to build the first new Catholic church in over 50 years and Pope Francis’s recent visit to the country, there are signs of increasing openness to religious life in Cuba after 50 years of repressive Communist rule. More →

March 18, 2016

“It’s morally urgent just as we send citizen soldiers to war that we bring citizen soldiers home,” says Georgetown University philosophy professor Nancy Sherman. Despite the moral hurt and guilt combatants feel, civilian society can help them recover “a sense of goodness about yourself, to empathize with the good part of you.” More →

March 4, 2016