Anyone who believes that modernity has quietly packed its bags and faded away under the weight of postmodernism needs to read John Thornhill rsquo s Modernity Christianity rsquo s Estranged Child Reconstructed Thornhill who is recently retired served as the head of the department of systematic t

Pope Says Politicians Must Conform Civil Laws to God’s LawPope John Paul II said political leaders must conform civil laws and policies to God’s objective moral law and to principles of solidarity and justice. An estimated 15,000 public officials from 92 countries attended the Jubilee fo

The Exorcist’ is back. A fresh review of a 27-year-old movie would surely tax the patience of even the most generous reader, but the reappearance of this now-classic horror film in its newly printed version with its enhanced sound and added 12 minutesnever before seen, according to the mislead

Flophouse is greater than the sum of its parts That is it is far more than a book of striking photographs of Bowery men and their surroundings with brief accompanying texts Because the four Bowery hotels described in the book are among the last of their kind in New York City the book has an ele

Election night proved to be the most exciting moment of the 2000 presidential campaign as American voters split almost perfectly over the candidacies of George W. Bush and Al Gore. The closeness of the race had been anticipated, but the networks added to the roller-coaster excitement by first predic

Contraceptive MentalityI am writing to offer a criticism of your editorial on RU-486 (10/14). I find one of the suggestions in your last paragraph most curiousnamely, your claim that there are people who accept the church’s teaching on contraception but reject her teaching on abortion. Aside f

If you are like me, you resent having your name on everyone’s mailing list, receiving direct mail of all sorts, mostly junk, and sometimes having your dinner hour interrupted with telephone solicitations. The scrupulous among us, however, not wanting to miss out on that one, real, authentic of

One of the first words my 20-month-old son learned was show, as in his favorite, eternally recurring program Barney. That most of what he watches is similarly innocuous doesn’t relieve our discomfort as he points to the television every morning and demands, Show! Show! Not that we deny him his

Scholars Say Vatican’s Published Material on Holocaust InadequateAfter a yearlong study, a commission of three Catholic and three Jewish scholars said that published Vatican material on World War II leaves unanswered many important questions about Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust. In a report m

Criminal justice is on the agenda of the U.S. bishops at their annual fall gathering in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 13-16. They will be discussing the draft of a pastoral statement entitled Responsibility, Rehabilitation and Restoration: A Catholic Perspective on Crime and Criminal Justice. Their comm

Maine ModestyI read with interest Of Many Things (10/21), which mentions my native city and tells the story of a golden boy by the name of Ian Crocker. I recently heard another amazing story about this ordinary Olympian. It seems he was working before he left for Australia this summer and mentioned

When, in early August, I had to back out of a social engagement on Long Island because I was heading to Philadelphia to cover the Republican National Convention, neither my prospective host nor any would-be fellow guests were particularly impressed. In fact, some insinuated that there was a more nef

On Nov. 17, 1953, the secretary of the Holy Office, Cardinal Giuseppe Pizzardo, sent a letter to the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Bernard Griffin. Graham Greene’s book THE POWER AND THE GLORY, it began, published in London in 1940 and afterwards translated into several languages, has be

Autumn is the most ambiguous of seasons. Throughout the centuries poets have used it as a symbol for either maturity or decay, much like a good news-bad news joke. But rather than wear oneself out trying to resolve this ambiguity, it seems wiser to submit to perplexity and agree with the 11th-centur

This year’s fall TV roundup was surprisingly simple to, well, round up, since there have been relatively few good shows introduced this season. And after all, does it take a media savant to predict that one is probably not going to enjoy a show called Freakylinks? Or that a show called Cursed

In 1976 Bruno Bettelheim caused a stir with The Uses of Enchantment arguing that Grimms rsquo fairy tales could be read as Freudian fables of adolescence identity and sexual maturation After some initial shock the consensus was that Bettelheim had a point Now another partisan intellectual the

A generation has elapsed since the close of the Second Vatican Council, and the church has underscored the council’s extraordinary ecclesial and historical significance by beatifying, this Sept. 3, Pope John XXIII. At the same time, however, the beatification of Pope Pius IX highlighted the ti

Although you would never know it from coverage of the Elián González custody battle, a quiet but thoroughly monumental revolution is taking place in the American family. The number of fathers solely responsible for the care of their children is growing at a rate almost twice that of single mothers