Jesuit Father Edward Dowling (1898-1960), although not an alcoholic himself, is beloved among members of Twelve-Step programs for his ministry to members of Alcoholics Anonymous and others seeking to overcome unwanted habits. He rescued A.A. co-founder Bill Wilson from debilitating depression and gave him the spiritual guidance he needed to bring
An Impasse In a way that few, if any, issues have dominated the landscape of reasoned discussion and legislation, bitter fights about who and what is pro-life or anti-choice and what it all means for women and children mark an impasse in American political life. In January of 2018, the
Brett Robinson: Hello, world! The advent of ChatGPT (on its fourth iteration as of this week) and generative AI has introduced some vexing questions about the role of language in online environments. How do we know who’s “speaking?” A person or a machine? What do authorship and originality look like in
Austria’s president honored Pope Benedict XVI on the final day of his visit to the “Alp Republic” on September 9, 2007 with Mozart music in the Vienna Concert House. While it is true that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in the Austrian city of Salzburg in 1756, that is not
We are currently amid what has been termed the largest consultation process in human history. Launched at Pentecost 2021, the Synod on Synodality—the hallmark of Pope Francis’s pontificate—will take place this October, just months away. The Working Document for the Continental Stage has been compiled from submissions from national Bishops’ Conferences.
A Child and His Mother The redemption of suffering and the mystery of love are inseparable. The response to suffering is not to stop caring—that, in fact, is hell—but to experience a caring that sustains us in our humanity as it was meant to be. This is the redemption that
There was once a small city with only a few people in it. And a powerful king came against it, surrounded it and built huge siege works against it. Now there lived in that city a man poor but wise, and he saved the city by his wisdom. But nobody
Moses and John the Baptist: The Final Exodus As explored in a previous essay on Fra Angelico’s The Harrowing of Hell, both Adam and Abel, leading the procession from the cavern of hell, serve as a first reminder of the dust of the wilderness. Through its very distance from heavenly glory,