Catholics believe in the "real presence of Christ" in the Eucharist, but as a concept I think it's short-sighted at times. Not to knock the Eucharist as something ...

As many of us had hoped, director Peter Jackson and his commendable crew offer moments of great terror in Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King . Fantasy finds ...

The sheer amount of food is nauseating—a typical plate consists of beef, pork, chicken, sausage, potato salad, rice, corn salad, tomato salad, and a glass of wine. After an extensive grilling process, the traditional Chilean ...

In an article I read from The Washington Monthly (reprinted in the recent Utne Reader on "Erotic Intelligence" ...

"In the year 2000," writes Tom Wolfe , novelist and Grand Poobah of non-fiction, "in the era of hooking up, ?first base' meant deep kissing (tonsil hockey), groping, and fondling; ?second ...

My neighbor owns two tanker trucks and supplies water to houses that don't get a regular supply. He's constantly working on the tankers with his helpers, opening up the ...

Getting a Life: How to Find Your True Vocation by Renée LaReau, Orbis (2003), 158 pages. It seems to me life improves drastically after you hit 30....

At a Catholic high school for girls in New York City, I have the amazing and demanding task of teaching 16 year old girls—who believe that they are ...

Raising kids today is more challenging than it has ever been. Kids today just aren't as young as they used to be. I don't have any scientific research to back this up, but I do ...

Entire wars have been fought over it, British lords beheaded, Spanish mystics incarcerated, principalities set on fire, and now it travels the internet in search of friendships to destroy. It is religion. And ...

Recently I took a trip I approached with both anticipation and dread . The marrying kind "We're getting married," my friend Kay had said when I picked up the phone. ...

I'm an optimist. I can find a positive spin in any situation. I'll admit, though, my gift of optimism failed me last year on Tuesday, September 10, a day ...

Shanksville, PA, Sept. 7, 2003—About ten miles off the Pennsylvania Turnpike (about 80 miles before you get to Pittsburgh), Shanksville is small town America incarnate. It must be the mostly unlikely place imaginable for the ...

I didn't know it would be Las Vegas—I didn't know at the time the capital of sin would give me back my sanity. Code ex-boyfriend blueI guess I couldn't know ...

It took me by surprise when my two very successful cousins, who both recently graduated from law school, said to me, "You're going to have to ...

"There I was, there I was, there I was… in the Congo ." It was the first thing ...

They say you can't go home again. In my case, its usually because someone has changed the locks on the door—so that I, literally, can't go ...

Art has the power to transform us into something better, something greater, so long as we don't merely place it on a pedestal. On my recent trip to Nicaragua, several images revealed the ...

The power actually browned out—gradually—in our section of midtown Manhattan on August 14 at 4:10 p.m. But before ten full minutes had elapsed, everything was completely gone. Like for most ...

It started with a simple physical. The doctor was almost done when, feeling my neck, she exclaimed, "Hello, what's this?" This turned out to be a lump , the size of a ...