Magazine

As the U.S. Senate began its confirmation debate on President Bush’s nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. for chief justice of the Supreme Court, the outcome of that debate seemed assured: Judge Roberts would be confirmed as the nation’s 17th chief justice with overwhelming approval b

John Long, Leading Ecumenist, Dies at 80John F. Long, S.J., a leading ecumenist and one of the world’s foremost Catholic experts on Eastern Orthodox churches and theology, died in New York on Sept. 20 following hospitalization for emergency cardiac surgery. He was 80 years old. Cardinal Willia

From the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, until the end of Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), Jews around the world engage in an intense annual period of repentance.

We can define ritual as a re-enactment of a previous event, in some cases a traumatic one, within the safety of sympathetic relationships. Its objective is not to repeat the trauma, but to bring resolution to it. Taking part in a ritual can evoke the deepest human experience of joy, grief or pain as

My friend Sunday Obote was just 7 years old when the Lord’s Resistance Army stormed his family home in northern Uganda one night in 1994. The L.R.A. is a rebellious guerrilla group that opposes the military government of Uganda, a land-locked nation in east-central Africa. And yes, the L.R.A.

Andrew S. Natsios, administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, sent a shudder through the room at a food aid conference in Kansas City, Mo., in May when he said that food aid to the survivors of disasters is a higher priority than aid for development programs. Two-thirds to thre

As we mark this month the 40th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council’s “Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions,” the Israeli government has taken numerous initiatives to increase awareness of the document that did away with the s