archives

All Things Catholic by John L. Allen, Jr.
	Friday, February 1, 2008 - Vol. 7, No. 21

Without a doubt, the push for robust assertion of traditional Catholic identity is the most consequential mega-trend in the life of the church today, and it is also the core of Benedict XVI's agenda as pope. Emboldened by the election of John Paul II in 1978, the identity wave hit the arena of liturgy first, then went on to engulf Catholic education, Catholic media, priestly identity and formation, religious orders, and virtually every other sphere of ecclesiastical life.

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Rome

This morning the Jesuits offered a press briefing in Rome on the ongoing work of their 35th General Congregation. The session was conducted by Fr. David Smolira, former Provincial of the British Province and currently director of the Jesuit Institute in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Smolira began with an overview of the congregation and then responded to questions on a range of topics, which I summarize below.

NCR Book Club

Reviewed by ERIN RYAN

SISTER WENDY ON PRAYER By Wendy Beckett Harmony Books, 144 pages, $21.95

Though she has been a hermit for the past 37 years, lots of people know Sr. Wendy Beckett. Her books and TV documentaries about art, such as “Sister Wendy’s Grand Tour” and “Sister Wendy’s American Collection,” took her to galleries around Europe and the United States and brought her name into the homes of viewers everywhere. In an introduction to her new book, Sister Wendy on Prayer, David Willcock, a producer at Spire Films who worked on many of Sr. Wendy’s TV programs in the United Kingdom, explains the nun’s impact on the television milieu. Wherever they were filming, he writes, “Resolutely agnostic producers, world-weary crews and hard-bitten press men could all be found, once the cameras were wrapped, pressing for answers to deeply felt questions about life, God, prayer and religion.”

The Peace Pulpit by Bishop Gumbleton	Sunday, January 27, 2008
Homily Archives	Weekly Homily

Every so often throughout the liturgical year as we listen to the scriptures, we will find times when the call of God for us to follow Jesus is made much more explicit and clear than perhaps it has at other times. Today is one of those days when we are being challenged very directly by God through Jesus to become his disciples, to follow him.

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Finding the holy in the ordinary
Robert Ellsberg is publisher and editor in chief at Orbis Books, a division of Maryknoll. He became a Catholic in 1980, largely through the influence of Dorothy Day, while he was living at the Catholic Worker House in lower Manhattan. After studying theology at Harvard Divinity School he joined Orbis as editor in chief in 1987. He is married, has three children, and lives in Ossining, New York. He is the author of three books on saints, All Saints, The Saint's Guide to Happiness and Blessed Among All Women.

He has just completed editing the diaries (1934-1980) of Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day and now is working on a collection of Day's letters.