Read a seminal article by Allan Luks in the October 1988 Psychology Today that describes the “helper’s high” – a sense of calm and enhanced self-worth – observed in a study of more than 1,700 women involved regularly in helping others. Altruism functions like exercise but has some advantages over it, Luks suggests.

Read a 2003 Boston Globe article on studies linking altruism to better health and stress reduction.

Read an October 2004 Science & Theology News article on evolutionary theory and altruism.

Dr. Laila Al-Marayati is a physician and past president of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Muslim Women’s League, which represents Muslim women and supports the status of women as equal members of society. The league has a speakers bureau and position papers on topic issues such as divorce, honor killing, female genital mutilation, gender equality, inheritance and […]

Robert Goodkind is a psychologist in private practice in Albuquerque, N.M. He also worked at the Paraclete center treating abusive priests in the 1980s and 1990s and is conversant with the pathology of the clergy abuser. 505-256-1021

The Rev. Howard Bleichner is assistant spiritual director at St. Paul Seminary in Pittsburgh. Bleichner wrote View From the Altar: Reflections on the Rapidly Changing Catholic Priesthood. He is a Sulpician priest with more than 40 years’ experience in seminary formation. He formerly was rector of the theological college at the Catholic University of America. He blames […]

Charlotte Rolnick Schwab is a psychotherapist and author who has lectured on the issue of sexual abuse and clergy, especially in Judaism. She draws parallels between what is happening in the Catholic Church and what goes on in other denominations and faiths. Schwab is the author of Sex, Lies and Rabbis: Breaking a Sacred Trust (1stBooks Library, 2002). […]

The Rev. Gerard McGlone, a Jesuit psychologist, is executive director at the St. John Vianney Treatment Center in Downingtown, Pa. He has said he believes some tightening of the admission process is appropriate: “I think to a certain extent the Vatican is correct in trying to weed out unhealthy expressions of the homosexual experience.” But he […]