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It’s been about seven years since my Mom sat me and my sister down and told us with tears that Dad was moving out and they were getting a divorce. A lot has happened between now and then, as you could imagine, but nevertheless we still occasionally find ourselves dealing with the aftermath of the divorce. That usually gets brought out in a real way around the holidays. While ritualized time with family provides rest and nourishment, this time of year also adds a certain amount of stress to...
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A few weeks ago I received a mysterious phone call. It was a faraway voice uttering sounds that I could not comprehend. Perhaps it was my fault. My hearing is not as sharp as I would like it to be. I asked who was there, but couldn’t understand the answer. It is only now that I am sure it was my Jesuit friend John Schlegel, calling from his hospice in Omaha, where he had gone to allow the final phases of his pancreatic cancer, discovered last February, to do its thing. He had sent me a gift—...
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On the morning of Nov. 16, 1989, 26 years ago today, an elite battalion of the Salvadoran Army entered the grounds of San Salvador’s renowned Jesuit University of Central America, with orders from El Salvador’s military high command to kill Fr. Ignacio Ellacuría and leave no witnesses.
When it was all over, the soldiers had killed in cold blood six Jesuit priests, their cook and her teenage daughter. It was a crime that shook the world’s conscience....
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In the wake of the terrorist attack, the president of the United States issued a statement. The president said:
…I directed the establishment of a Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism…aimed at bringing the full resources of all appropriate United States agencies to bear effectively on the task of eliminating terrorism wherever it occurs. I have charged it to move vigorously and immediately toward this end.
The use of...
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On Oct. 10, a group of African-American students at The University of Missouri interrupted the school’s homecoming parade. Armed with megaphones and wearing shirts that read “1839 Was Built on My B(l)ack,” the protestors stood in front of president Tim Wolfe’s car and, one by one, described racism they’d each experienced at Mizzou. Protestors shouted angrily, “We will not continue to be called n*****s on this campus!”
On Nov. 6, Wolfe...
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In calmer times, it’s easy to dismiss complaints that election season in the United States seems to begin earlier and earlier each time, to the point that we really have a permanent campaign with no windows of opportunity for bipartisanship. Political maneuvering really does take place all the time, even in attendees’ decisions on when to applaud during an inauguration speech, so why pretend otherwise?
Still, the responses to the...
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The tragic, violent events of the past days in Beirut and Paris, as well as the recent downing of a Russian plane fill us all with rage, horror and fear and cause many of us to ask, “Is there still space for dialogue with Muslims?” The answer is: yes, now more than ever.
When I returned to Canada in 1994 after having spent the final four years of my graduate studies in Sacred Scripture in Jerusalem, I was certain of one thing: Islam was becoming a growing, global concern and a great...
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Perhaps it was because it was that time, quite early on a Saturday morning when I had to commute to a day-conference nearby Westminster Cathedral, but I have not seen so many grimly armed police on duty in London. The cheery rosy-faced London “bobby,” armed only with unflappable reasonableness and common sense, one of the stereotypes of this city, was nowhere to be seen. In his place were pairs of flak-jacketed and heavily-armed Metropolitan Police and there were online rumours that the SAS...
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Pope Francis has firmly condemned last Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris as “an unqualifiable affront to human dignity” and said, “to use the name of God to justify the path of violence is blasphemy.”
He expressed his profound condolence to the president and people of France and his closeness to the family members of the victims and to the injured, when he addressed thousands of pilgrims from many countries in St. Peter's Square at midday Sunday, Nov. 15.
“I wish to express...
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Dom Christian de Chergé was one of the Trappist monks killed by extremists at the Monastery of Notre Dame of Atlas in Tibhirine, Algeria, in 1996, by terrorists identifying themselves as the "Armed Islamic Groups." (Their story was told in the film "Of Gods and Men.") Dom Christian and the other Trappist martyrs knew that by remaining in Tibhirine, in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in the country who also faced terrorism and violence, they might be called upon to offer their...