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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
Books
The dramatic question in the headline above was asked by mdash among many others mdash the Rev John L Girardeau a Presbyterian theologian at a ceremony honoring the Confederate dead from Gettysburg being re-interred in Charleston rsquo s Magnolia Cemetery in 1871 The question was meant rhetori
News
Paraguayans Elect Retired Bishop Lugo as President Retired Bishop Fernando Lugo was elected president of Paraguay April 20, ending the six-decade rule of the Colorado Party. Bishop Lugo took an early lead in the pre-election polls despite official disapproval from the Vatican and, initially, from th
Columns
Benedict's trip to the U.S. was a sojourn of hope
Editorials
As we have learned in both Iraq and Afghanistan, security in the 21st century will demand a comprehensive response that uses a full spectrum of resources. “Soft power,” in the form of diplomacy, economic development and human rights enforcement, will be more in evidence than military for
Books
Edward Hirsch president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foun-dation has contributed mightily to our appreciation of poetry How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love With Poetry 1999 discourses on all the aspects of poetry drawing widely on what the poets themselves have had to say about it Po
The Word
Who is God for you That is a question to stop a conversation or empty a room even of learned and devout Christians It is at once a very personal question since we each experience God in a unique way and a very broad one The phrase ldquo for you rdquo is important since the God whom we Chris
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