There is an insecurity epidemic that is raging among teenage and preteen girls in our society. Last year we saw it most vividly in the spread of “Am I hot or not?” and “Am I ugly?” videos on YouTube, which not surprisingly led to vicious, hateful comments by anonymous commenters. This year, there will inevitably… Read More Keep It Real Revolution: Catholic Schools and Authentic, Secure Girls
[This article by Mario Powell, SJ is also featured on The Jesuit Post, where the author is a columnist] On Wednesday, November 7, 2012, the lead article in The New York Times crowed: “Barack Hussein Obama was re-elected president of the United States on Tuesday, overcoming powerful economic headwinds, a lock-step resistance to his agenda… Read More The 2nd Inauguration: Now Can We Say Racism Is Dead?
Martin Luther King Jr. is a national hero, a remarkable figure whose courageous pursuit of justice compelled Americans to recognize and correct our nation’s failure to live up to its highest ideals, those so elegantly expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Yet King’s vision transcended these ideals. He articulated notions of equality, freedom, and justice… Read More Dr. King & Catholic Social Teaching
Every day millions of women and girls around the world are subjected to unspeakable cruelties and deprived of basic human rights. They are stripped of their basic human dignity and denied the opportunity to fulfill their potential. These atrocities are largely ignored by the communities and countries in which they take place, and are too… Read More Redefining the War on Women: The International Front
A dark shroud seemed to envelope America in the last few weeks of 2012. From the constant media chatter about the fiscal cliff to the coverage of trauma and heartache in Newtown, CT, the days were filled with painful reminders of our human failings and fragility. The darkness seeped into my own family with the… Read More Illuminating God’s Love at Work in the World
Enough is enough with all of the talk about “defending traditional marriage.” The authentic Christian call to marriage, becoming one flesh, which is articulated in Genesis and affirmed by Christ, is and always has been exceptionally radical. It challenges us to build a future not yet seen, not to gaze back at an illusory past.… Read More Promoting Christ’s Vision, Not Traditional Marriage
The events in Newtown snapped me back to the first few months of the onset of my sister’s severe mental illness, when I learned that mental disorders were not individual diseases, but family ones, community ones. All of a sudden, I was twelve again, reading the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and… Read More A Better Response to Mental Illness
Millennial 