Slowly over the past 25 years in the United States the old belief in free will has been replaced by a pseudo-scientific belief in determinism Faulty genes bad brain chemistry neurotransmitters gone bonkersthese are some of our postmodern excuses In American Exorcism however Michael Cuneo does

Perhaps I should have known from the title that Robert Morgan rsquo s new novel is about faith Before I could reflect on the title and try to puzzle out a reference point for it I was caught up in the story Morgan is like that You leaf through a page or two and suddenly the narrative has swept y

In early April, the upper house of the Dutch Parliament voted to legalize what has been a legally tolerated practice for the last two decades: euthanasia and physician assisted suicide (PAS). Over the last decades Holland has moved to a more open and accepted practice of euthanasia and PAS by develo

The bitter grievances that many in the poor nations have against the rich nations produced two explosions last month, one actual and one figurative. The terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 were as real as death. The quarrels that nearly blew up the United Nations Conference on Racism amounted to a symboli

A Deeper LookIn my search for meaning and the words to express it, Cardinal Avery Dulles provides a profound perspective. His reflections on the Shoah (9/17) apply equally to the incineration and crushing of over 6,000 people on Sept. 11. Following Cardinal Dulles’s sage advice, I have asked m

Pope’s Visit Produces Ecumenical Firsts Two ecumenical firsts occurred when Pope John Paul II visited Armenia at the invitation of the Armenian Apostolic Church, an ancient and independent Oriental Orthodox church that in recent years has improved its relations with the Vatican. He stayed at t

When I learned that the subject of Garry Wills rsquo s latest book was Renaissance Venice my initial reaction was a mixture of surprise disappointment and pleasure Surprise because it seemed to stray far beyond his usual field of interest and expertise however broad that may be Disappointment

One of the most striking attributes of Harvard Divinity School professor and theologian Harvey Cox has been timeliness His first book The Secular City published in 1965 proclaimed the collapse of traditional religion to be a main hallmark of our era It generated controversy sold nearly a millio

Eudora Welty, who died on July 23 at the age of 92, will remain forever for me a Southern gentlewoman who honed her writing skills to do her life’s work: create lasting literature. She lived in Mississippi throughout the era of the civil rights movement, seemingly apart from the fray. But she

Young adult Catholics are legion. Statistical surveys indicate as much. Yet when I step over the threshold of my parish church, I see very few of my peers.

As this issue goes to press, we are a little over three weeks removed from the day terror struck. It has been a time of intense and widespread prayer on both small and grand scales. We hear people constantly talking about faith, about the comfort they find knowing that God hears. Such was a conversa

Tuesday, Sept. 11, may have changed everything. The unprecedented violence perpetrated against the United States now demands, many claim, an unprecedented response. In light of this horrific attack and understandable citizen outrage, it is not surprising that the composition of that response is bein

To write about Sept. 11, 2001, is to know the paucity of one’s vocabulary and literary skill. The words are so disproportionate to the tragedy that the temptation is to stop trying to describe it. John Paul II condemned it as an unspeakable horror and a dark day in the history of humanity, a t

Friday, Sept. 14On my second day at the site that the press now calls ground zero, it has become more difficult to gain access, even in a Roman collar. Today at Chelsea Piers, a sports arena turned supply warehouse, I hitch a ride in a huge tractor-trailer with two ironworkers from New Jersey. Becau

Vatican Signals Wider, Qualified Support for U.S. Military Action As Pope John Paul II made a four-day visit to Central Asia, the Vatican appeared to signal a wider—though still qualified—margin of support for eventual U.S. military action against terrorists around the globe. The pope&#8

Combining archetypal psychology ecclesiology and ethics Eugene Kennedy in his latest book The Unhealed Wound sets out a disturbing vision of church malaise rooted in the distorted transference of sexual energy into power and manipulation Kennedy uses the analogy of the wounded Grail King of the

In the language of the Western just war tradition, the attacks of Sept. 11 were indiscriminatethey (at least, those on the World Trade Center) involved a direct and intentional attack against civilians. But Osama bin Laden appeals to the tradition of Islam; he holds that such attacks are not only pe

My friend Mohammed rises every morning at 1:30 after five or six hours of sleep. He prays, showers, gets dressed and leaves his apartment near Crown Heights in Brooklyn by 2:30 or so. He walks the safe but never entirely secure streets of central Brooklyn until he finds his car, an old midsized seda

Well Covered IssueI commend America and the artist Michael Altman for the wonderful cover for your religious education issue (9/24). As an artist—and especially a collage artist—I am aware of the ingenuity of Mr. Altman as he created this composition. He succeeded in bringing together ph

When Virginia Woolf published Mrs Dalloway in 1925 her fourth novel she set out to demonstrate what she thought was needed in modern fiction an examination of the interior of her characters the stream of consciousness that holds each of us together from moment to moment What did not interest