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Cardinal George's plan to evangelize America
'We did what the church asked us to do'
Ghanaian cardinal destined to be an ecclesiastical star
Catholic bloggers
Cardinal George's plan to evangelize America
Calls liberal Catholics 'chaplains of status quo'; conservatives in sectarian dead-end
Ghanaian cardinal destined to be an ecclesiastical star
Could Cardinal Peter Turkson of Cape Coast, Ghana, be the next pope?
Bringing passion to what the world most needs
Nov. 20, 2009
Patrick Keenan
Patrick Keenan, 26, Formation Director at Hopeworks ‘N Camden, was born and raised in Western New York, just south of Buffalo and went to St. Bonaventure University, an institution run by the Franciscans.
It was through St. Bonaventure’s that he connected with the St. Francis Inn in Philadelphia, one of the older soup kitches in Philadelphia. The kitchen is open 365 days a year and on average serves about 400 meals a day to homeless, elderly, those who have lost jobs or families having difficulty making ends meet.
NCR editor at large Tom Roberts interviewed Keenan on his work in Camden, academics and on being a young Catholic. Following is an edited version of that conversation.
NCR: How did you come to work at this spot in Camden?
Keenan: I spent a year working with the operations of the soup kitchen and then another year working with children and families who were guests of the inn, who came to the inn for meals. We were doing different things like working with utilities or housing issues or other such things.
Afghan war flawed from start, says ethicist
Nov. 10, 2009
Taliban fighters walk with their weapons at an undisclosed location in Afghanistan Oct. 30. (CNS photo/Reuters)
Religion News Service
DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke University ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, a self-described Christian pacifist, is an expert on just war theory. As Hauerwas sees it, not only did Iraq and Afghanistan fail to meet the criteria of a just war, but neither did World War II. Now, as the Obama administration weighs its options in Afghanistan, Hauerwas, 69, remains decidedly pessimistic not only about American prospects, but also American morality. Some answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Pope gives top honors to Mother Angelica
Oct. 14, 2009BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Mother Angelica, 86, the nun who founded the world's largest religious network, rarely leaves her bed these days and didn't make it to an Oct. 4 ceremony awarding her a papal honor.
Pope Benedict XVI awarded the Cross of Honor for distinguished service to both Mother Angelica and Deacon Bill Steltemeier, 80, chairman of the board for EWTN, the network Mother Angelica founded in 1981 in a garage at the Our Lady of Angels Monastery in Irondale.
Bishop Robert Baker of Birmingham presented the medals and certificates to Mother Angelica and to Steltemeier.
Sr. Margaret Mary, the mother vicar of the monastery, received the framed document and medal on Mother Angelica's behalf in the public part of the ceremony at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville.
Mother Angelica's frail health restricts her activities, said EWTN spokeswoman Michelle Johnson. “She doesn't really do ceremonies,” Johnson said. “She doesn't make public appearances right now.”
Recognizing lay gifts bears fruit in Las Cruces, bishop says
Latest installment of 'In Search of the Emerging Church' series
Oct. 14, 2009
Bishop Ricardo Ramirez of Las Cruces, N.M.(CNS/Bob Roller)
LAS CRUCES, N.M.
Bishop Ricardo Ramirez, 72, a member of the Congregation of St. Basil, was appointed founding bishop of the Las Cruces diocese in 1982. He is widely recognized as a skilled pastoral leader who has great rapport with the people of his diocese, which remains among the poorest in the country. It depends a great deal on financial help from outside the diocese and has had to be creative in tending to parishes with few priests. Ramirez sat down the morning of Aug. 11 for an interview with NCR at the diocese’s Pastoral Center.
'More Than a Game'
New documentary explores a basketball-winning formula of family, friends, faith
Oct. 14, 2009
LeBron James (center) with St. Vincent-St. Mary's basketball team, as seen in "More Than a Game." (Photos by Lionsgate)
Of active basketball stars, Kobe Bryant may have most name recognition, but 6-foot-8-inch LeBron James, the highest-paid player in the NBA, drafted out of high school by the Cleveland Cavaliers, has caught the popular imagination. Now, with “More Than a Game,” a new documentary by first-time director Kristopher Belman, we get to see inside the heart and soul of a basketball champion and the family and friends who made him who he is.
Old meets new in faith lives of two New Mexico women
The latest installment in Tom Roberts 'Emerging Church' series
Oct. 07, 2009
From left, volunteers Cathy Maestas, Maria Gomboa and Connie Trujillo make sandwiches for a lunch program St. Francis Xavier Parish runs for the poor and homeless. (Tom Roberts photos)
Sarah Nolan, 28, was a sophomore at the University of San Francisco at the turn of the millennium. She was a long way from her home in southern New Mexico and had already moved through progressive stages of personal change — from a fascination with science and wanting to be an engineer to interest in marketing to undecided — when she found her window to deeper faith and a life's work steeped in the church's social justice tradition.
Dominican Sr. Bernice Garcia was in the fourth grade when she knew she wanted to be a religious sister. Now 72, she has witnessed the trajectory of religious life through the latter part of the 20th century into the 21st and the concurrent changes in church life. She's currently parish administrator, effectively the pastor, of St. Francis Xavier Church in a poor neighborhood of Albuquerque, N.M. It is a ministry she could not have dreamed of doing as a young girl, nor for most of her long career with the Dominicans of Grand Rapids, Mich.
Cardinal George's plan to evangelize America
Calls liberal Catholics 'chaplains of status quo'; conservatives in sectarian dead-end
Oct. 07, 2009
Cardinal Francis George (CNS)
Chicago’s George says both liberals and conservatives focus too much on bishops, not enough on Christ
Rome
Historically, American cardinals have rarely been preoccupied with the intellectual life. By reputation, they’re known more as pragmatists – bricks-and-mortar men, or pastors, or political powerbrokers – as opposed to the European model of the theologian-bishop. Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George, however, has long been an exception, and his new book The Difference God Makes: A Catholic Vision of Faith, Communion and Culture (Crossroad) offers a classic illustration of the point.
George, who is also the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, is in Rome this week for meetings between conference leaders and Vatican officials. While in town, he’s also presenting his book at the Lateran University.
Ghanaian cardinal destined to be an ecclesiastical star
Could Cardinal Peter Turkson of Cape Coast, Ghana, be the next pope?
Oct. 05, 2009
Cardinal Peter Turkson of Cape Coast, Ghana, blesses jugs of water to be used as holy water June 9 during his two-day pastoral visit to the small village of Ekumfi Nanaben.
Rome
For the better part of three decades, the phrase “African pope” almost automatically beckoned images of Cardinal Francis Arinze, a smiling, charismatic Nigerian who loomed in the popular imagination as the best prospect to become the first African pope since Gelasius I in the late fifth century, and only the third African pope in history.
Arinze, however, is now retired and will turn 77 on Nov. 1. With the opening today of the second Synod for Africa, the torch has in effect been passed to Africa’s next great papabile, or candidate to become pope: Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, who will celebrate his 61st birthday on Oct. 11.
Asked this morning during a Vatican news conference if the Catholic church is ready for a black pope, Turkson answered simply: "Why not?"
U.S. theologian rebuts charges of dissension
Oct. 05, 2009OTTAWA -- The U.S. theologian invited to address the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops' plenary in mid-October has rebutted online charges that he is a "liberal dissenter."
In a five-page letter to the bishops' conference president, Archbishop V. James Weisgerber, a Catholic studies professor at the University of Toledo, Ohio, Richard Gaillardetz, said the online attack involved "a very selective marshaling of isolated texts for the purpose of creating an ideological caricature."
Catholic bloggers
Setting aside the sites that mudsling, here are some lively voices
Oct. 01, 2009
(Pat Marrin)
In December 2004, a young Philadelphian logged onto Blogger and started writing about the Catholic church. More than 11 million hits later, Whispers in the Loggia (whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com) has become the must-read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the church.
Let’s call it what it is: church gossip. Even the blog name conjures up images of Vatican bureaucrats divulging secrets in ancient Roman corridors. Which isn’t too far from what happens -- only via cell phone to a 20-something blogger in his parents’ basement in south Philly.
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