Although a slander suit against Polish Cardinal Jozef Glemp was dismissed by a judge last week, Rabbi Avi Weiss vows that he will not rest until the cardinal apologizes for remarks made in 1989, which Weiss claims injured his reputation and were anti-Semitic. Last week’s decision by U.S. District Court Judge Robert Patterson was the latest setback for the Bronx,…
Cowboy’s sins had multiplied and gone unforgiven for so long that he’d stopped believing they could be. Then came his jailhouse confession. Ashes smudged on his forehead as a sign of repentance, Cowboy bent forward in his chair. The priest leaned in closer, the purple stole around his neck swaying slightly. With hands sweating and lips trembling beneath a pencil…
There are Jewish spirits in Catholic Poland, made from flakes of black ash, sealed in a silent sky with the tears of lost memories. These things Rabbi Byron Sherwin believes. “In Poland, a Jew is never alone,” he says. “The souls of our ancestors encompass us, welcome us, embrace us.” He first heard the soft callings of his ancestors in…
Located in southeast Yugoslavia, just off the Adriatic coast, the little village of Medjugorie wasn’t even mentioned on Yugoslav maps published a decade ago. Before 1981, Medjugorie was notable only as the quiet home to several thousand peasant farmers who grew tobacco, grapes and wheat, and steered their cows and goats along unpaved country roads. But, ever since the Mother…
Of the “peace” that followed the First World War, Pope Pius XI wrote in 1922: “This peace was only written into treaties; it was not , however, written into the hearts of men and women, who still desire to fight one another and to continue to menace in a most serious manner the quiet and stability of civil society.” The…
Americans are facing tough questions about their responsibilities in what’s being called a new world order—a new historic moment when ancient hatreds and long-ignored injustices have flared into ethnic and religious wars that have already claimed millions of victims. As the borders and assumptions of the Cold War years are redrawn, many find that their old moral coordinates are shifting…
[First in a two-part series on death and dying in an Albany, New York hospice] Agnes Wickham’s hands are clasped together as they might have been when she made her first Holy Communion. Only the wrinkles and distended veins betray the passage of time. Head bowed and eyes shut tight, she speaks her prayer confidently, in a gravel whisper: “Please,…
Leaving Saudi Arabia recently, his mission as U.S. commander in the Persian Gulf complete, America’s newest war hero, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, was defiant but on the defensive: “Anyone who dares even imply that we did not achieve a great victory doesn’t know what the hell he is talking about.” Since the war’s end, a lot of people have been talking…
Lucy Saavedra will always remember the fiesta days at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City—the brilliant sunlight in the afternoon and the carnival atmosphere; the joyful bustle and clamor in the square; the excited chatter of the boys and the girls all dressed-up like 16th-century native peasants; the jangling bracelets and anklets of the natives who…
On Nov. 5, Washington State residents went to the polls and voted against making their state the first place in the U.S. where it is legal for doctors to kill suffering people who want to die. Even apart from the outcome of that state’s much talked-about Initiative 119, it has become clear in the last year that Americans are at…