I have just returned from seeing the rock group Rush perform a more than three-hour concert in Concord California thus marking at least the dozenth time maybe closer to 15th or 20th that I ve seen them live since my first Rush show around 1986 After spending the evening with so many for wh

Luke is the one in his Acts of the Apostles who describes the event we celebrate this Sunday May 4 It is in contrast to the ascension he describes at the end of his Gospel In the latter there is great joy at Jesus going to his Father the ascension is the triumph or part thereof which f

Nobody likes paying the exorbitant price at the pump and both John McCain and Hillary Clinton are trying to cash-in politically on Americans cash-out experience when they fill up They have proposed a tax holiday from the federal gas tax for the summer Clinton offers a windfall profits tax on oi

This week on our podcast the playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis author of the The Last Days of Judas Iscariot discusses his new play The Little Flower of East Orange Guirgis talks about moments of grace in his life and the writers who have inspired him Listen here Little Flower starri

Yes Virginia there is a Republican candidate Amidst all the press coverage of Barack Obama s crazy pastor and Hillary Clinton s craven gas tax holiday you can be forgiven for forgetting that John McCain is running for president too But his campaign is taking shape and doing so in ways that

Up until maybe ten years ago it didn t occur to me what kind of bleeding the woman with the hemorrhage told of in Mark 5 and Luke 8 was actually experiencing My unexamined mental image was of a woman with drops of blood oozing from random pores who somehow did not bleed to death Then I heard

One of the words Pope Benedict repeated the most during his sermons and speeches while visiting America was truth although when Benedict uses the word my mind s eye sees it with an upper-case T as Truth The phrase dictatorship of relativism from his sermon to the cardinals before the conclave

Here s the Anchoress with an exhaustive exegesis on the controversy that was bound to happen as soon as Mr Guiliani rose from his pew last Saturday Read the full post here James Martin SJ

Tomorrow I take off for Lourdes the shrine in Southern France where well if you don t know that story you re probably reading the wrong blog Anyway let me share one thing before I leave My hosts for the trip are the Order of Malta officially called the Sovereign Military Order of M

Dale Recinella has updated his article Ending the Death Penalty from the April 28 issue to include commentary on the Supreme Court s recent decision on the constitutionality of lethal injection Read it here You ll need to scroll to the end Tim Reidy

Well we can t blame Fox News anymore for turning the decades-long career of ministry by the Rev Jeremiah Wright into a You-tube-driven caricature The good reverend on his own initiative went before the National Press Club and demonstrated that he is every bit as zany as the previous caricatur

Robert Novak famous for publishing the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame has decided to use his morning column to pose as the head of the Vatican s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith He notes that several pro-choice politicians received communion at the papal Masses in Washington and Ne

New and selected stories from Tobias Wolff, reviewed

Russia rsquo s cultural history in the 20th century presents both ldquo triumph and tragedy rdquo For every masterpiece published or exhibited countless more never saw the light the state mobilized artists and writers to serve its goals but kept them on a short leash ready to break any who da

Awaiting a spring that is coming slowly to the Big Apple, I fast-forward my thoughts and summon the words of the 18th-century poet James Thomson: “…who can paint/ like Nature? Can imagination boast,/ amid its gay creation, hues like hers?” Signs and wonders will soon abound in all

A change of position by one Catholic Supreme Court justice could make a difference.

A new majority enters the culture wars.

A Watched Pot Never Boils In “Curbing Medical Costs” (3/10), Daniel Callahan starts a necessary discussion about health care. Unlike the proverbial frog in the pot of water, which did not detect the rising temperature until it was too late to jump out, the American people are becoming aw