Recently, the Boston College Center for Christian-Jewish Learning has placed in its document depository a brochure entitled “A Sacred Obligation: Rethinking Christian Faith in Relation to Judaism and the Jewish People”, containing a set of ten statements from the Christian Scholars Group on Christian-Jewish Relations.  While many of the statements raise interesting points, and rightly [...]

On Monday, March 15, Pope Benedict XVI issued his World Youth Day message, inviting young Catholics to realize their vocations and follow Christ, rather than going away sad as did the young rich man in Mark’s Gospel, reflecting on this year’s theme, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  This particular Gospel [...]

In the modern world, it is an all too common phenomenon for Catholics to over-emphasize social activism, while forgetting what must always lie at its root.  Such service to others, undoubtedly, is a good and admirable thing by its very nature, but it becomes infinitely more valuable when performed in a spirit of love for [...]

Beginning on Wednesday of last week, Catholics began the observance of Lent, the forty-day period of preparation for Easter.  As is typically the case, Masses on Ash Wednesday were quite crowded, and many people around campus could be seen with ashes on their foreheads.  It is rare, however, to see so many people at Mass [...]

The 2010 Catholic Social Ministry Gathering was held in Washington, DC from February 7th to 10th in the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill.  The event brought together various people to discuss social issues and concerns.  Namely, the CSMG placed an emphasis on discussing human life and dignity, as well as how to work for and [...]

Just over a year ago, on January 24, 2009, the Holy See published a decree remitting the excommunications of the four Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) bishops, Alfonso de Galarreta, Bernard Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, and Richard Williamson, incurred when they were illicitly consecrated by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the Society’s founder, [...]

On Monday December 7th, Fr. Gary Gurtler, S.J. offered a Latin Mass in the Ordinary Form in St. Mary’s chapel, in anticipation of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.  Servers Philip Micele, Mike Williams, and Nate Sanders assisted at the altar while Jon Tveit, Dan Burns, and Austin Travis provided Gregorian chant with approximately 30 [...]

If one had to tie the modern  crisis in the Catholic Church to a  single source, it would not seem  unreasonable to link it with the  spirit of excessive compromise  that has relentlessly undermined  and stripped away all devotions  that had the potential to serve  as a “stumbling block” to those  outside the Church.  This [...]

Boston College recently hosted a panel to discuss the murder of six Jesuits, their housekeeper, and her daughter, and the implications of this crime for our own society. On the panel were University chancellor Fr. J. Donald Monan, S.J., liberation theologian Fr. Jon Sobrino, S.J., and renowned linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky of MIT. Fr. [...]

There is perhaps no more obvious disparity between the outlook of modern Catholics and that of Catholics in ages past than the way in which each looks upon death, judgment, heaven, and hell, the four “last things”. For centuries, the Church saw judgment as something essential to the Faith, and encouraged a holy fear that [...]