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The challenge and opportunity of preaching the Gospel to a contemporary audience
Letters
Dumb Brutes
Regarding Stafford Betty’s “Letter to a Reluctant Atheist” (4/14): It is very difficult to conceive of contemplative experience divorced from any theological construct. After all, human nature is rational. We strive to find answers to our fundamental questions, to find meaning in and around us. To experience anything at all without finding meaning or adequately understanding what has been experienced amounts to life in the animal kingdom.
Joanna Ionescu
In All Things
A wonderful day has been passed in the company of my wife s and therefore my extended family and friends at a bar mitzvah celebration in Brooklyn A few notes from the day I was nearly stricken by a mysterium tremendum et fascinans when the bimah became study-desk as the young man of t
The Good Word
Pentecost is a day of peculiar significance in the Acts of the Apostles First while the Old Testament knew from the prophet Joel that God would one day share His Spirit with the world of believers the one who actually pours out the Spirit is Jesus - he who received the Spirit from his Father for
The Good Word
Many years ago now when I was a teenager I went to visit a girl I knew in Texas over Thanksgiving She had a brother at Oral Roberts University so we took the bus from Lubbock Texas to Tulsa Oklahoma to visit him and the campus I did not know much about Oral Roberts but I was sweet on the gir
In All Things
The Washington Post has a front page story this morning that details the intense lobbying effort that persuaded Sen John McCain to support a land swap in Arizona that benefited one of his principal fundraisers at the expense of the government A gaggle of former McCain employees worked on the deal
In All Things
Have you heard about vicarious religion The phrase made me laugh out loud when I spotted it in Peter Steinfels terrific review of A Secular Age by Charles Taylor subscriber only Apparently this is a description of the penumbra of belief remaining in those for whom religion is but a
In All Things
The members of Order of Malta or at least its American branches concluded their annual one-week pilgrimage to Lourdes yesterday and your intrepid Jesuit reporter was among them As in the past few years I was as a guest of and chaplain for the Federal Association of the Order which makes
In All Things
The State of Israel celebrates its 60th birthday today All Americans should take a moment today and think about this anniversary and why we too should join the celebration Palestine was stuck in the Middle Ages in 1948 The Ottoman Empire had ruled the area for centuries until its collapse in Wor
In All Things
Sen Hillary Clinton s campaign for the presidency had received reprieve after reprieve in New Hampshire Ohio and Pennsylvania Unable to surmount Sen Barack Obama s lead in the delegate count she needed to at least keep the narrative going he can t close the deal she keeps winning races
In All Things
Cambridge MA Several months ago I mentioned that I was teaching a seminar on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali This fundamental yoga text from nearly 2000 years ago is brief -- 195 very succinct verses -- but it is the reference point for all the later yoga systems I promised to report on the res
In All Things
Readers of this blog will know that it would be inaccurate to describe me as a fan of Sen Hillary Rodham Clinton Yet it is impossible not to admire her tenacity the sheer gumption with which she has approached her ever-diminishing odds of being selected as the nominee of the Democratic party her
In All Things
Was that Tim Russert on Meet the Press yesterday Instead of the usual offering of gotcha questions and decades-old quotes all designed to put the interviewer s prey into a meltdown Russert asked thoughtful persistent questions of Sen Barack Obama and even gave him sufficient time to answer
To combat the rise of atheism, Christians must first look to themselves.
Who are the “new atheists”? Broadly speaking, they are a collection of writers who have come together in recent years in their disdain for the very idea of God. They regard religion as the last bastion of superstition, obscurantism and fear and see the Christian churches as dedicated to
Of Many Things
Faith and obedience, Pope Benedict XVI reminded Americans, are not easy words to speak nowadays.
Columns
Motherhood demands risk, personal danger and courage. When Mary said yes to life, to becoming the mother of God, she risked everything. As a young, unwed mother in a patriarchal society, she risked losing her family, her place in the community and thus her means of survival. Joseph’s first ins
Have the new atheists adopted a faith of their own?
The Word
The word ldquo Pentecost rdquo derives from the Greek word for ldquo fifty rdquo It marks 50 days after Passover on the Jewish calendar and 50 days after Easter on the Christian calendar Among Jews it is known as Shebuot or ldquo Weeks rdquo and celebrates the giving of the Law to Moses on M