DOUBT IS THE JOY OF BEING A BELIEVER
Father John Walsh

We often forget that there is one thing that faith and belief require and that is the element of doubt. Unfortunately many people allow their doubts to overwhelm them. Doubts are challenges to rethink faith and belief. The reality is that there can be no faith without a good dose of doubt. The lack of doubt would turn faith and belief into absolutes. Absolutes define faith and belief in such a way that divide believers from non-believers. The defense of the …

FINDING OUR WAY IN A SECULAR WORLD
Father John Walsh

We are surrounded by a secular culture in which few people publicly make mention of God. Today, God is shelved into history. In our Western culture people can live and see themselves thriving without any reference to God. The culture has voided God. The question still begs to be asked: who is the God we have abandoned? Many people express the thought that the God they believed in let them down. Prayers were not answered when people pleaded with God to help …

AFTER THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH THERE IS NEW LIFE AHEAD
Father John Walsh

The Catholic Church is imploding before our eyes. We are in crisis. The list of priests who committed criminal acts of sex-abuse against children is growing longer every day and the subsequent cover-ups by the authorities is a shameful moment in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. The greatest change that has been effected has gone unmentioned: The Church is a grass-roots church to be built from the ground up and not from the top down. The …

MY VISITS TO ANGOLA PRISON
Rabbi Michael Whitman

In 1984, shortly into my first rabbinic position in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans, with very little pastoral experience, I received a call from a stranger. There was a prisoner in Angola State Prison, on death row, who requested a visit from a rabbi, would I come? When, years later, I saw the film “Dead Man Walking,” I recognized the walk through the housing project at the beginning, filmed on scene. I took that walk to meet the woman who would become my …

HELEN PREJEAN — POPE FRANCIS ABOLISH DEATH PENALTY

Father John Walsh
In 1976, after an impassioned, last-minute speech by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, the House of Commons narrowly passed Bill C-84, abolishing the death penalty in Canada. It was abolished after a decade of fierce debate. Sister Helen Prejean writes Dead Man Walking and narrates the movie of the same name for which Susan Sarandon received an academy award playing the role of Sister Helen. Years later I attended a talk by Sister Helen at UQAM in Montreal. She was forceful and …