The central icon of Catholic Christianity is mother and child. That motif is so deep in not just our human experience but in our animal, biological past.

We never get to the bottom of ourselves on our own. We discover who we are face to face and side by side with others in work, love and learning.

The problem of the universal is difficult in every case. The universal and the particular can never be separated they always go hand in hand.

The family is in flux, and signs of trouble are widespread. Expectations remain high. But realities are disturbing.

Leaving home in a sense involves a kind of second birth in which we give birth to ourselves.

Nothing is ever lost means that what we are now goes all the way back through natural history. We are biological organisms and not simply computerized brains. By focusing totally on the present, thinking only about science and computers, and forgetting four billion years of life on this planet, we are losing perspective on who and what we are.

The academic world is one of the few places where prejudice is supposed to be totally banned, and we're politically correct on everything, but it's still a place where you can attack religion out of utter, complete, bottomless ignorance and not be considered to have done anything wrong.

...for limited purposes only, let me define religion as a set of symbolic forms and acts which relate man to the ultimate conditions of his existence.

It's clear all the way through history that practices are primary and beliefs are secondary.

Our culture is at a critical cusp - a time that requires that we define what it means to be a citizen in a democracy. Within our nation we need to foster a greater sense of collective responsibility.

However painful the process of leaving home, for parents and for children, the really frightening thing for both would be the prospect of the child never leaving home.

While there are practical and sometimes moral reasons for the decomposition of the family, it coincides neither with what most people in society say they desire nor, especially in the case of children, with their best interests.