U.S. Catholic

Homosexuality has claimed the job of another employee of a Catholic institution, but not because he publicly supported same-sex marriage. Indeed, Daniel Avila, until recently a policy adviser on issues of marriage and family for the U.S. bishops' conference,...

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The woman held up a pair of roller skates. "Can you call the priest?" she asked me. "I want him to bless these." It was one of those moments when, as a parish secretary, I wanted to scream: Stop the church, I want to get off!...

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A number of years ago, during a forum for divorced and remarried Catholics at a Jesuit retreat house in Austria, a woman shared her story: "After my divorce I went through a long period of deep self-doubt and depression. In...

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Hollywood must think we love women in uniform, particularly domestic uniforms. Last August, Tate Taylor's film The Help brought us busloads of Mississippi maids sporting crisply starched pale blue dresses and white aprons....

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] SAINT MARY'S COLLEGE student Elizabeth "Lizzy" Seeberg committed suicide on September 10, 2010, 10 days after she'd claimed a University of Notre Dame football player fondled her against her will. The details leading up to...

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Here's a New Year's resolution that I never thought I would have to make in this early stage of the 21st century: For 2012 I firmly resolve to do my best to stop using slaves. Difficult as it is to accept, slavery remains...

THE WAY Directed by Emilio Estevez (Arc Entertainment, 2011) If contemplation, as the mystic and spiritual writer William McNamara once said, is "a long, loving look at the real," Emilio Estevez's understated drama of loss, recovery, and reconciliation...

WORKING IN TENNESSEE Merle Haggard (Vanguard Records, 2011) Merle Haggard has been a monument of American culture for almost 50 years. His life story is the stuff of myth. He really did grow up dirt poor in a home his father made from an old...