You know how the church has been hit so hard by the sexual misconduct by clergy, and what's that's done to Catholics, especially here in Boston but elsewhere as well.

Others don't want to listen to viewpoints that members of the church have.

Some of the speakers we bring on campus may not reflect official church teaching, but that's how it is.

By no means do I anticipate screening those who come on to campus... And I have no difficulty if a bishop across the country or some local pastor may say that's not Catholic teaching - that's fine.

BC is not going to replace the hierarchy, and BC is not going to lead some major reform in the Catholic Church - that's got to come out of the whole Catholic community.

I would be with those who say the hierarchy in the United States has badly mishandled this whole situation.

Now where people are - at least the people I talk to - they are focused on issues of trust. Accountability also comes up, to make sure that this doesn't happen again.

I say let's respond as best we can to the victims and their families.

The Spirit hasn't deserted the church today.

No organization, whether it's police or physicians or whatever, wants to have its errors held up to the light of day, but it's wrong, as is coming out so well.

One of the biggest issues that we face is that we have people who have their own particular concerns, whether it's on abortion, birth control, divorce and remarriage, civil rights or social justice.

Clearly there are individuals who don't understand what the church teaches, or they think it's so limiting.

I think the issue of clergy sexual abuse sparked people to look at their faith in a different way.

What I think we can do is help individuals understand the church teaching, but also maybe help the church understand the viewpoint of lay men and women about what they want in regard to priests, or how do they want the hierarchy to deal with them?

The hierarchy shouldn't fear what we're doing.

Individuals will speak their minds, which I think is healthy.

I would say the hierarchy has made terrible errors in judgment and it has to seek forgiveness by its members.

The church may hold whatever it holds with regard to clerical celibacy.

We are the meeting place, an entity that's trying to connect faith and culture.

This is a crisis, but there is an opportunity to help revitalize and renew the Catholic community.

You know how the church has been hit so hard by the sexual misconduct by clergy, and what's that's done to Catholics, especially here in Boston but elsewhere as well.

I think we can work through a lot of these issues.

What we're about is a manifestation of the Catholic roots of Boston College.

The more we can get together and talk about various perspectives, feelings, beliefs, the better.

I am very confident that the Spirit is with us.

As a university, we're not focused on bringing about huge reforms - that's not our role.

We've always had issues up for discussion at Catholic universities.

There was a time when I was wondering about this business of going public, so I visited about a half-dozen companies in the Boston area, all of them formed by MIT faculty and all had gone public.

Was the crew well? Was I not? I had profited in many ways by the voyage. I had even gained flesh, and actually weighed a pound more than when I sailed from Boston.

Our situation here, without any exaggeration, is beyond description almost; it is such as eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it ever entered into the heart of men to conceive Boston ever to arrive at.

A very considerable body of the German people live in America and propose to fight that Government. Bourke in his great speech last week welcoming the Belgian mission to Boston worked out the President's meaning with care.

At a Boston signing, someone from the audience asked why I was so obsessed with furniture in my books. The question rattled around in my head. I had no idea that I was obsessed with furniture.

My father was the orphaned son of immigrants to the United States from Ireland. My father never knew his parents. His mother died - we're not sure - either at or shortly after his birth, and he and all of his siblings were placed in orphanages in the Boston area.

Boston is the engine of the state's economy.

And it was from Boston that one in every six American families began their journey into the land of the free.

I don't believe a manager ever won a pennant. Casey Stengel won all those pennants with the Yankees. How many did he win with the Boston Braves and Mets?

There isn't much discussion of ruling class in America even in Boston, probably one of the most class-conscious cities in the country?

In my freshman year in high school, I went to the only public high school in Boston with a theatre program.

The word survivor suggests someone who has emerged alive from a plane crash or a natural disaster. But the word can also refer to the loved ones of murder victims, and this was the sense in which it was used at a four-day conference in early June at Boston College.

Probably the biggest thing that surprises people is that I am obsessed with hockey. I grew up in the Boston area so I am obsessed with hockey since I was a little kid.

When I go abroad I always sail from Boston because it is such a pleasant place to get away from.

I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.

Here's what I see all across this great city - people working together to make Boston a better place to live and to raise children, to grow and pursue dreams.

Paul Farmer has helped to build amazing health care system in one of the poorest areas of Haiti. He founded Partners in Health, which serves the destitute and the sick in many parts of the world from Haiti to Boston and from Russia to Peru.

I recently did a piece for the Boston Pops and John Williams, and I hope that it's as well a composed piece as I've ever done for any other medium or occasion.

If you're writing a piece for the Boston Pops, the balance is towards one end. If you're writing a piece for a chamber music society, then it's towards another point. I won't make a final answer on that. I think it changes with every piece.

Let's use the energy of this historic year to propel us toward our shared vision of a greater Boston.

I got private lessons in keyboard at Julliard, before New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.

And that's the mistake that was made with Steel Pier. Roger was caught between a rock and hard place. It would have cost a couple of million dollars more to take it to Boston or someplace first. So we opened about a month too early.