The retreat that changed my life

The spiritual exercises of St Ignatius have been used for centuries as a way of ?discernment of spirits?. As a Jesuit novice, The Tablet?s executive editor was looking forward to using these techniques on his crucial thirty-day retreat. He did not expect to spend most of it in desolation. Here he describes the agony and its surprising fruits....

The American way

The American bishops gathered in Dallas this week had only one item on their agenda ? the clerical sexual abuse crisis. They know it has changed their relationship with their lay people. The California-based editor-at-large for the National Catholic Reporter of Kansas City diagnoses the mood of the American Catholic Church....

Marriage doesn?t pay

The British Government wants to help poor families. But its new tax-credit system is biased against poor married couples. The project manager of Civitas, the London institute for the study of civil society, warns that this is sending out a harmful signal....

Paths for pilgrims

The journey which pilgrims undertake mirrors an inner journey, as our Paris...

Cheating while retreating

Planning an eight-day retreat in his native Canada, the president of St Jerome?s University in Waterloo, Ontario, discovered there was no room for him at the Jesuit Loyola House he favoured. So he turned to its counterpart in England. Judging by the results, he thinks that the change of plan was providential....