Thirty years ago, on Aug. 31, 1980, an electrician named Lech Walesa signed the Gdansk Accords, ending a two-week-old strike at that Hanseatic city's Lenin Shipyards. Walesa signed with a giant souvenir pen featuring a portrait of Pope John Paul II. The choice of pen was not, as Marxists might have said, an accident. Neither was the distinctive revolution that unfolded in the wake of the Gdansk Accords, which were forged over two weeks of high drama on Poland's Baltic coast.
The Accord...
I had relegated shepherds to the unicorn file, somewhere near the hunch-backed blacksmith and the whistling milk man. They were the stuff of Mother Goose lore. So it was surprising to discover actual shepherds when I visited the Holy Land.
I was riveted by the sloping landscape of Jesus' ministry. Two tones checkered our vistas: crusty white limestone and fluttering blue-green olive trees. And there, among the jagged hills, was a man tending sheep. He was dressed in brown and his head...
Mother Teresa of Calcutta easily could have faded into the crowd were it not for her white, blue stripe-bordered sari for which her Missionaries of Charities are known throughout the world.
As a participant of the month-long 1994 Synod of Bishops on Consecrated Life, the then-84-year-old foundress and superior general sat day after day with other men and women religious, bishops, cardinals and delegates from other Christian churches, in the presence of Pope John Paul II, to reflect on...
Despite the sadness a lot of people feel when summer ends and school starts again, there's no denying there's something exciting about the process of preparing for a new academic year.
You get new clothes, new school supplies and new textbooks.
Teachers present you with new information, and coaches give you new responsibilities on the team.
There are new adventures ahead of you — new clubs to attend, new jobs to do, new friends to make.
Back-to-school is a time f...
Most of the speakers at recent Lutheran and Episcopal conferences agreed that stewardship is countercultural — an antidote to the poisons of consumerism, materialism and individualism that have thoroughly infected our society.
The conferences were held in July. "Rethinking Stewardship: Our Culture, Our Theology, Our Practices" was the theme of a conference in Eden Prairie, Minn., sponsored by Luther Seminary. "Grace, Gratitude and Generosity" was the name of the 2010 Stewardship Confer...
The status quo is no longer acceptable.
That was the gist of the two keynote talks during this year's Catholic New Media Celebration in Boston. The Catholic Church needs to become a leader in online communications and social media — and it needs to do so now.
Father Robert Reed, director of CatholicTV, an online and broadcast television network, suggested Catholics practice the craft of media pro...
If you travel north from Missouri through Iowa and follow the Avenue of the Saints (yes, that's what it is really called), you will reach a field of windmills just before entering Minnesota.
The windmills look nothing like those of Don Quixote. They are enormous — three or four times taller than the trees or barns or telephone poles that dot the landscape beneath them. Their arms and bodies are made of strong metal, but they respond to the wind with great assent.
Whoosh. Whoosh....
About 35 years ago, I desperately wanted a new bicycle. I still can remember the object of my desire: a sky-blue, 10-speed Schwinn with those handlebars that curved downward.
My parents didn't go out and buy it for me, though. I had to save for it myself. I used my allowance, birthday and Christmas money, everything I earned from mowing lawns and serving weddings and funerals. I counted my every penny as well as my folding money because back then, it took quite a while to save the $110...
My cell phone was stolen the other day. I turned my back for five minutes to talk to a friend at a crowded event.
When I turned back, it was gone. Somebody had nicked it from right under my nose!
The phone's absence made me realize how much we rely on technology these days, for even the smallest of things.
Teens today are some of the most affected by this reliance. They're living in a world that will only become more saturated with technology as time passes.
Techn...
It was 4 p.m., and hesitance was creeping in.
"Ten-year high school reunion," she tweeted. "To go or not to go?"
A single mom who had just been let go was facing a chance to prove she had not let herself go — and seeking a little courage online.
She played punk rock, applied extra blush and pinned on a homemade bridal hairpiece. Three hours later she was primped and pumped up.
"I'm gonna rock it," she typed.
There is nothing like a high school reunion to for...
Saint Louis Review
20 Archbishop May Dr. Saint Louis, MO 63119
314-792-7500
