Carol Zaleski
Foolish prayer: “Pray as you can, not as you can’t”
Six years before he died, American philosopher William James filled out a questionnaire about religious experience....
Faith and doubt at Ground Zero: Interfaith conversation
On the morning of All Saints Day 1755, while the faithful citizens of Lisbon were attending mass, the city of 250,000 was crushed by a catastrophic earthquake, fire and flood....
Beginning again: Where New and Old Worlds meet
September 11, the war in Afghanistan, the impending war in Iraq, the devastating conflict between Israel and Palestine, the crisis in the Roman Catholic Church, the crisis in big business, children...
Help, St.Anthony: Another shipwreck averted
As I write, it is morning on the feast of St. Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of poor people and shipwreck victims and the finder of lost objects. It is June, the month of the Sacred Heart....
In defense of celibacy: An act of total self-giving
Every day the newspaper brings fresh evidence of the crisis in the Catholic Church, a crisis with implications far-reaching enough to be of concern to all Christians.
...Jesus with a cowlick: Christ's hidden childhood
When Andy turned six, an extraordinary thing happened....
A letter to William James
Dear Professor James: A century has passed since you delivered the 20 Gifford Lectures on natural religion at Edinburgh, and published them as The Varieties of Religious Experience....
360-degree prayers
When the new war has become an old war, and a new world has emerged from it, what will the religious landscape look like?...
Renouncing Satan
One Saturday morning when there was a brief lull in our domestic hubbub, I asked our 13-year-old son John what he considered to be the most important things in life....
Generation GK: Give Chestern to your friends of the MTV generation
No doubt it is a peculiar vantage point from which to survey the religious habits of the current generation, but my vantage point is that of a religion teacher at a liberal arts college....
The prayer of Jabez
And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil,...
Diary of a Russian priest
By a coincidence that must strike a chord in the hearts of all who long for Christian unity, Easter Sunday falls on the same day this year for Christians of both East and West....
Storming heaven
Not long ago I went to visit my mother at a busy New York hospital where she was recovering from heart-valve surgery....
Young minds
Five-year-old Andy is in the shower looking for ways to use an entire bottle of blue, no-tears Aussie shampoo (the kind with the kangaroo on the bottle) without washing his hair....
Ancient Christian magic
A few months ago I had a visit from the college-age daughter of a friend of mine. The young woman, an exceptionally gifted linguist, had developed an interest in religion and philosophy....
Praying in tongues
I first heard the Lord’s Prayer in Mexico, during a family trip when I was 11 years old....