Next year will mark 50 years since John S Dunne C S C fresh from writing a dissertation on Thomas Aquinas under the direction of Bernard Lonergan S J at the Gregorian University in Rome joined the theology faculty at the University of Notre Dame In those five decades he has published 16 boo

Years ago my husband and I spent a grim rainy day at the former Dachau Concentration Camp in southern Germany The museum rsquo s last exhibit in white letters against a black background was a single line from American philosopher George Santayana Those who forget the past are condemned to repea

I owe a great deal to Henri J M Nouwen His writing which I first discovered in the 1970 rsquo s helped clarify the spiritual life for me I continue to read and profit from his books and recommend them to others Oddly I felt a certain trepidation about this posthumous work on spiritual direct

In his new book Before the Next Attack Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman takes a complex constitutional proposal directly to the American public and he does a terrific job explaining the what and why of his proposals as well as the history of emergency power in the United States I am sure my le

Can anyone seriously doubt that sustained reflection on the topic of peacemaking is among the most urgent tasks facing humankind In the wake of the bloodiest century in history the Christian community has a solemn obligation to share with the wider human society whatever insights it can glean from

In his poem God rsquo s Grandeur Gerard Manley Hopkins calls it the dearest freshness deep down things and in his Book of Pilgrimage Rainer Maria Rilke refers to it as the deep innerness of all things What each poet strives to capture in words is the heart of matter beyond appearance that essen