Essays in Theology

The feud, if it might be called that, between the Catholic Health Association (CHA) and the U.S. Catholic bishops over the health-care reform legislation that has already been passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law by President Obama, is the subject of this week’s column.

Many years ago, when the National Catholic Reporter was a young newspaper, it ran a feature in the left-hand column of Page 1 that highlighted embarrassingly dumb items that had recently appeared in parish bulletins and other ecclesiastical documents.

Chapter 8 of Fr. Charles Curran's forthcoming book, The Social Mission of the U.S. Catholic Church: A Theological Perspective, to be published by Georgetown University Press before the end of the year, focuses on the U.S. bishops and abortion law.

The death of Williams Borders, retired archbishop of Baltimore, this past April at age 96 has dramatized the acute change in the composition of the U.S. hierarchy over the past 30 years, that is, since the election of Pope John Paul II in 1978 and the departure of Archbishop Jean Jadot, Apostolic Delegate to the United States, in 1980.

This year we observe the 400th anniversary of the death of Matteo Ricci, the famous Jesuit missionary to China who died on May 11, 1610.

Ricci, an eminent scientist in his own right, adapted Christianity to Chinese culture, promoted the use of Chinese rites, and assumed the status and dress of a mandarin. For that he was a great, but also a tragic figure in the history of the Church.