Magazine

The United States once again holds first place as the world’s biggest arms sellerso noted the recent report of the Congressional Research Service, Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, delivered annually to Congress. Here is a troubling distinction indeed, given the fact that the

Degraded ProcessIt was very disheartening to read the article by John W. O’Malley, S.J., on Pius IX (8/26). Why have saints at all, if there is so much politics and deceit involved in the process of becoming a saint? Shouldn’t a saint be a role model and provide encouragement for how one

The patient. At a Mercy Hospital in the Midwest, Steven Becker, a 28 year-old husband and father, lies in what is called a persistent vegetative state (P.V.S.) brought on six months ago when a cyst cut off blood in his brain. In the absence of advance directives, a hospital ethics committee recommen

Protestants Respond to Vatican DocumentThe World Council of Churches warned of potential damage to ecumenical dialogue following the release of a Vatican document emphasizing the Catholic Church’s pre-eminent status among Christian denominations. What a tragedy if the witness of joint Christia

In several serious dramas on Broadway this summer, the good (or bad) angel of uncertainty bedeviled many a leading man. Ambiguity and ambivalence plagued them in at least four plays. From Arthur Miller’s updated salesman in The Ride Down Mount Morgan to Tom Stoppard’s fortyish playwright

Back in the 1950’s, when I was a kid in a Jesuit high school, a novel called Mr. Blue, by Myles Connolly, was all the rage. The eponymous hero was a mystical type who combined the social activism of Dorothy Day with the contemplative reserve of Thomas Merton. In short, he made Catholicism cool