The instinct to worship

Reflections on shepherds, Magi and demagogues
By Leo J. O'Donavan
About “early holiday decorations and shopping,” it seems, little more can helpfully be said. But what can be said about the “Christmas story” will always be inexhaustible. Even, for example, about demigods and demagogues before whom, unaccountably, human beings have so long been inclined to bow their knees. In the ancient Near East, kings represented the gods -- and were reverenced accordingly.
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A Christmas gift worth gold

By Bill Zalot
Aaron is a nephew and my godson. This year he made his confirmation. On Thanksgiving day, he asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I didn’t respond immediately. “I have to give this some thought,” I said. The next day I phoned his home, and spoke to my sister, his mom, and told her, “Aaron asked me yesterday what I wanted from him for Christmas. Tell him, I’ve thought about it, and all I want from him is time we can spend together.”
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Despite different beliefs, we are one family

By Bob McCahill
Skinny, awkward 6-year-old Bareek was brought to me by his skinny, worried mother. A doctor has diagnosed the boy’s cerebral palsy. I pledged to arrange a two-week course of physiotherapy so that mother could learn to help her son. On that very day, Haroon and I were hauling earth in baskets to lay as a foundation for my new house. Bareek decided to help us.
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Sex abuse scandal in the Netherlands brings requiem for Dutch Catholicism

By Mathew N. Schmalz
Last Friday, Archbishop of Utrecht Wim Eijk held a press conference to apologize for the abuse of tens of thousands of children in Catholics institutions in the Netherlands. The abuse was documented in a report that covered the year 1945 onward. Since the story is now a familiar one, the report has merited mention but little sustained attention. But for some Catholics of my generation, the press conference was a coda, a requiem of sorts.
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Merry Christmas from NCR!

By Sara Wiercinski
Sara Wiercinski
As we come to the end of another year, all of us at NCR are so are grateful for your support. We've prepared a video with Christmas greetings from a few of our contributors, the NCR board of directors and staff.
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Poland adjusting to more secular age

By Donald Snyder
WARSAW, POLAND -- The traditional primacy of the Roman Catholic church in Poland has been shaken. On Oct. 9, one of every 10 Poles voted for the socially egalitarian and explicitly anticlerical party known as the Palikot Movement, named after founder Janusz Palikot.
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An economic vision with a ray of hope

President Barack Obama’s Dec. 6 speech in Osawatomie, Kan. -- where Teddy Roosevelt gave his “New Nationalism” speech in 1910 -- marks a defining moment in this presidency. The speech offers a moral framework -- resonant with Catholic social teaching -- that names the absurdity that seems to rule national politics.
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The high cost of the now-defunct war in Iraq

And, like that, the war is over. Over with a somber ceremony in a highly secured location in Baghadad. Over with a simple, two-word "Welcome home" from President Barack Obama in a ceremony at Fort Bragg, N.C. Conspicuously missing were the throngs of cheering, pro-American Iraqis that existed so long ago in the fevered imaginations of former President George W. Bush.
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Iowa billboards show sisters' support of immigration reform

In preparation for the Iowa caucuses, 10 communities of religious sisters issued billboards Monday across Iowa with a Gospel message in addition to a statement calling on the president and Congress to make progress on comprehensive immigration reform.
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Crisis of climate, land use underlies Ethiopia's drought

By Chris Herlinger
ADIGRAT, ETHIOPIA -- It says a lot about Tigray, Ethiopia, that people can’t legally cross the border with Eritrea but cattle can. “It is a chain of disaster,” Fr. Teum Berhe Danne mused one morning recently about life in this northern province that borders Eritrea -- a locale that almost seems to define the word hardscrabble.
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Protesters persist despite crackdown

US policy may undermine Bahraini struggle for democracy
By Stephen Zunes
Of the popular pro-democracy civil insurrections that have swept the Middle East over the past year, none were as large -- relative to the size of the country -- as the one that took place in the island kingdom of Bahrain. And while scattered resistance continues, none were so thoroughly suppressed.
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Of liturgy and life: Jesuit scholar reflects on his 46 years in Rome

By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service
In a sitting room where lace doilies top every table, Jesuit Fr. Robert F. Taft's gray sweater and wooden cane add to the impression that he's a refined retired professor. But then he shared what he believes is the line his former students quote most: "There are two things you do not do alone: liturgy and sex."
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