As America nears its 100th anniversary in April 2009 the magazine will be celebrating in a variety of ways both large and small One part of our celebration we re particularly excited about is the America Essay Contest Thanks to a generous donor we will be awarding 3 000 to the writer who mak

Cambridge Ma -- Advent and Christmas perhaps even more than other religious holidays are at first a bit awkward at Harvard even at the Divinity School where I teach While custom and the academic calendar combine to maintain the sense that December is a festive time there is little room for

I love it when I see converging ideas in separate fields In recent work in theology and evolutionary psychology there has been a new emphasis upon the centrality of relationship In Elizabeth A Johnson s wonderful new book on God Quest for the Living God she has a chapter on the Trinity atten

The Pope s cat Chico has written a new book called Joseph and Chico A Cat Tells the Life of Pope Benedict XVI which will be published by Ignatius Press in March From the press release In this beautifully illustrated book for children Chico the cat describes the life of his best

If you haven t seen it already be sure to read our Candidate Index in the December 24-31 Current Comment Just scroll down to the bottom of the page We hope Harper s won t mind Tim Reidy

Christmas is being moved to June And for good reason Beat Christmas Burnout

This CBS television show In God s Name set to air Sunday night Dec 23 9-11PM ET looks interesting It was produced by the talented French filmmakers Jules and Gedeon Naudet who did the amazing doc on 9 11 a few years ago They filmed the destruction of the World Trade Center accidentally

These last seven days of Advent are a special time of the Church year among my favorites on the liturgical calendar nbsp Not only do the readings for the daily Masses just before Christmas include the beginnings of the Gospel infancy narratives Matthew 1 on Dec 17-18 Luke 1 on Dec 19-24 but

In Matthew 1 20 the Gospel author cites a prophecy from Isaiah 7 14 concerning a 8220 virgin 8221 Gk parthenos who would give birth to a child Matthew seems to be citing the Septuagint LXX a 3rd century B C translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek which also has parthenos Why

This Sunday s readings invite us into an area of considerable discussion--not to say dispute--in classrooms pulpits pews chanceries and other such places How is Scripture to be interpreted most fruitfully What methods and questions are most suitable Do we need to consider the 8th century c

Last Sunday s Book Review section in the New York Times has a wonderfully funny article by Dave Itzkoff Planetary Politics suggesting works of science fiction that different presidential candidates might say they ve been reading Rudolph Guiliani he posits might say he s been reading T

A few weeks ago Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship said that he saw a certain obstinance my word not his in response to Pope Benedict s motu proprio relaxing restrictions on the Latin Mass called Summorum Pontificum Here s what Archbishop

The struggle of the people of Myanmar for justice in the face of an iron-fisted military junta (which changed the country’s name from Burma to Myanmar in 1989) that tolerates no dissent continues unabated. At the center of the struggle is the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi,

Of all the dizzying questions devised 8220 How did language begin 8221 has to rank near the top Humans plainly learn to speak by imitation but back in the beginning who was there to imitate We can 8217 t talk without a vocabulary and syntax 8212 but where did they come from All the earli

Adlai E. Stevenson would not have fared well in the 2007 presidential primary debates, though he was perhaps the greatest American orator of the 20th century. “Religious experience is highly intimate,” the two-time presidential candidate once said, “and, for me, ready words are not

On the list of Christ's ancestors, Bathsheba, Ruth & Rahab stand out.

The plight of Iraqi Christians

Pope’s New Encyclical, ‘Spe Salvi,’ Addresses Modern Crisis of Hope In an encyclical on Christian hope, Pope Benedict XVI said that without faith in God, humanity lies at the mercy of ideologies that can lead to “the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice.&#8221