Magazine

Pope Benedict XVI’s recent revision of the “Prayer for the Conversion of the Jews” in the Latin text of the 1962 Good Friday liturgy set off a wave of questioning by puzzled Catholics and anxious concern among Jewish observers. Did the revival of language calling for the conversion

How does the future of Catholicism in America appear to be shaping? Let us look at the facts. Immigration, the constant source hitherto of Catholic increase, has been cut down from the wide torrential river which it was before the Great War to an insignificant trickle. Mere numerical increase of the

During graduate studies in English many years ago, I came to love certain academic books, the first of which was Northrop Frye’s The Anatomy of Criticism. Frye, who applied archetypal analysis to classic literature, labeled comic drama as “the mythos of spring,” a celebration of a

What’s New? I found “A Life in Theology,” by Avery Dulles, S.J. (4/21), to be somewhat disheartening, because he is dismissive of innovation and new insights, labeling some of them as deviant. “Very few new ideas, I suspect, are true,” he says. This suggests a claustrop

The Information Age has been eclipsed by instantaneous infotainment

Freedom for Christians Those who are following the fits and starts of Turkey’s current attempt to enter the European Union have undoubtedly been reminded of earlier, less peaceful encounters between the Turks and Europe. The Siege of Vienna in 1529 and the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, the latter

Gigantic waves—like those that surged across the Indian Ocean in 2005 taking countless lives—are now sweeping through the poorest nations of the world. In addition to the cyclonic waves that have wrought so much destruction this month, there are waves of hunger and anger caused by the dr