The IHM Core Values of Justice and Respect for Diversity have long motivated the congregation to foster the human aspirations of people, particularly where needs are unmet and social structures inadequate. Chapter 2006 issued the challenge to promote justice for immigrant persons in local and…
Category: Advancing the Kingdom
“Unremitting orientation to life and to the future”
Those in need of a strong dose of hope would do well to acquaint themselves with the Congregation of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHMs) in Scranton, Pennsylvania. One need only visit the Congregation’s website, www.sistersofihm.org, to encounter such rallying language…
Evolving perspective
Here’s an intriguing question. What school was founded by a saint almost a half millennium ago and now can claim among its alumni/ae 72 saints, 17 popes (eight of the last 11), about one-third of the College of Cardinals, and more than 900 living bishops?…
Immigrants and Sojourners
Ever since our ejection from the Garden of Eden where our earliest parents lived in the paradisiacal state for which our Creator had created us, we have been migrating “sojourners and pilgrims” (1 Peter 2:11) making our way back – with God’s help – to…
My Mother-in-law, Moses and John Paul II
Shortly after her retirement, my mother-in-law was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. As it happened, as a member of the Catholic media, I had just received an invitation to attend a meeting with Pope John Paul II in Los Angeles. On the off chance that I…
The Ignatian Volunteer Corps – Experience, Service, Reflection
The Ignatian Volunteer Corps (IVC) was founded early in 1995 when Jesuit Fathers Jim Conroy and the late Charlie Costello gathered a small group of retired women and men to consider ways to minister to persons who are materially poor and, at the same time,…
John Paul the Great
Four decades ago, in the Empire State Building where Catholic Relief Services then had its headquarters, I met Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Though petite in physical stature, she was already a moral giant in the eyes of the world. In the years that followed I…
Ratisbonne
For many of our non-Catholic friends it is an anomaly. Some even consider it borderline idolatry. But, for Catholics the veneration of the Jewish girl who became the mother of Jesus and the Mother of God is a practice that began in the early centuries…
Daily bread and hope
Several months ago this column under the heading “Venerable Antiquity” reported on the Maronite Church, an Eastern Catholic Church in communion with the Holy See. Word has arrived today that following the resignation of the esteemed and elderly Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir, a successor has…
Stay or go?
Much has been written in recent years about the exodus of so many in the United States from the Catholic Church. Indeed, it has been observed that while Catholics make up the largest denomination in America, the second largest comprises ex-Catholics.