If you’ve endured the bohemian existential farce Jesus Christ Superstar, you may recall the title song’s ostensibly rhetorical question: “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, who are you? What have you sacrificed?” While Superstar wallows in campy skepticism, at least it voices a desire written on every human heart: the yearning to encounter Christ.

Finding a comprehensible primer in Christology usually results in a dry recitation of dogma à la the manualists or a cafeteria-style reduction disguised as an impassioned interpretation — say, “the wisdom Jesus” or “the real Jesus of history.”

Filling this gap is the compact yet comprehensive new volume Jesus 101 by John L. Gresham, theology professor...READ MORE

OTTAWA — When members of Lifeline, a small but committed pro-life club at Carleton University, tried to put up a pro-life display, university security and police officers arrested them.

The incident took place last October, when five members of the group were hauled away in handcuffs after their attempt to display the Genocide Awareness Project in a prominent campus quadrangle at the Ottawa university.

Now, two of the five students facing trespassing charges have sued the university and several staff for $200,000 Canadian. Lifeline president Ruth Lobo and treasurer John McLeod, both 22, claim that the school and its staff were wrong to arrest them, broke their own policies and violated...READ MORE

As John Paul II wrote in his “Letter to Families,” “The contemporary family, like families in every age, is searching for fairest love.” The phrase “fairest love” is a traditional translation of Sirach 24:24: “Ego mater pulchrae dilectionis — I am the mother of fairest love,” or, more simply, “I am the mother of beautiful love.” In Sirach, these are words spoken by Sophia, by Lady Wisdom, in praise of herself. In the Catholic tradition, they are applied to Mary.

At the very top of the first page of his handwritten manuscript of the theology of the body, John Paul placed a verse from the Song of Songs, also applied to Mary, “Tota pulchra es, Maria.” The full verse in the Vulgate reads, “...READ MORE

YAMAGATA, Japan — Residents of the area around a crippled nuclear power plant in Japan were dealing with fear, uncertainty and lack of information in the days following the devastating earthquake and tsunami March 11.

After the magnitude-9 earthquake, reactors at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant were hit by explosions, and Japanese officials ordered hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate.

Kazuhiro Kikuchi, his wife, Kazuki, and two of their three children were staying at a large sports center-turned-evacuation center in the city of Yamagata, about 40 miles north of Fukushima, where officials were struggling to contain fires and radiation inside the crippled nuclear plant’s six...READ MORE

Fittingly, on March 17, 2010, St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral in Manhattan was officially named the first basilica in the Archdiocese of New York.

This is not the new St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in Midtown that receives about 20,000 visitors and worshippers every day — but the 200-year-old church that was the city’s original cathedral. Its cornerstone was laid in 1809, and it was officially dedicated on the feast of the Ascension in 1815.

But until it was named a basilica, most visitors were unaware of this church in Lower Manhattan.

This St. Patrick’s, America’s second cathedral, was a beacon of Catholicism in the early 19th century. It became a parish church on May 25, 1879,...READ MORE

Pope John Paul’s reflections on what he sometimes called “the gospel of the body” unfolded through his Wednesday audiences in St. Peter’s Square, but his teaching was developed in numerous other speeches and addresses, encyclical letters and exhortations on marriage, women and the Blessed Virgin Mary.

It has become increasingly clear that these meditations have the potential to transform our understanding, not only of human sexuality and ethics, but of human nature and culture in general.

It is often assumed that the theology of the body is all about sex. But it is not so simple.

Sexual relations are only a part of something much bigger and deeper. Before we can follow what the Pope is...READ MORE

“The New Evangelization” is a term coined by Pope John Paul II the Great to describe the current need for the evangelization and re-evangelization of countries and areas of the world that are historically Christian, but for various reasons are no longer so, or are Christian in name only. Pope Benedict XVI has taken up this clarion call with regard to Europe in particular, as he witnesses Europe’s attempts to deny even the factuality of its Christian roots. Pope Benedict even instituted the Pontifical Council for New Evangelization last year.

The “re-evangelization” of countries is not new. There are precedents wherein a country/people received the kerygma (the initial proclamation of the...READ MORE

LONDON, Ont. — State by state, supporters of assisted suicide are ramping up their efforts to seek friendly legislators or sympathetic judges to enable the terminally ill to get help ending their lives if they are incapacitated.

Hawaii, Montana, New Hampshire and Vermont are among half a dozen states where legislators have recently faced bills to either legalize or outlaw assisted suicide.

Opponents have hastily assembled to fight the measures, aided by national or international groups like the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, Not Dead Yet and the Patients Rights Council.

Outside the U.S., since the beginning of 2010 five countries have defeated efforts to pass more radical laws...READ MORE