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FaithThe Word
"Back to basics!” is a familiar slogan in many walks of life, including religion. The basics of Christianity include the creeds, moral precepts and sacraments. But where do these basics come from?
Arts & CultureBooks
What exactly is the conservative intellectual tradition in America More troubling still what can be said who can be cited to counter Lionel Trilling rsquo s pronouncement in his preface to The Liberal Imagination 1950 that In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant
Editorials
Hunger here in the richest nation in the world? Impossible, one might think. But the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ annual Hunger and Homelessness Survey makes it clear that hunger and food insecurity (not always having access to enough food to meet basic needs) not only exist, but are on the rise
In a recent article in The Nation, the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, author of American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville, expressed his shock at the moribund state of the American secular left. He found it strange, as an outsider, that so many progressives seem to
The Word
All over the world people seem to be searching for their ldquo identity rdquo Some find it in religion race or gangs often with disastrous results There are also others especially the young with very little sense of identity or self-esteem Here too the result is sometimes tragic issuing in
Current Comment
Reality CheckIn recent weeks, plans for school and parish reconfigurations have been disclosed in a number of dioceses. It is reality-check time across much of the Northeast, where changing demographics have occasioned these realignments. However poignant and evocative the stories of my grandmother
"Señor, me has mirado a los ojos; sonriendo, has dicho mi nombre. (Lord, you have looked into my eyes; smiling, you have called my name.) So goes the refrain of one of the best known Latin American hymns, which poignantly expresses the core Christian belief: God loved us first. When you looked
Faith in Focus
"Let him easter in us," wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins in his poem The Wreck of the Deutschland. In this case easter is a nautical term. It means steering a craft toward the east, into the light. Throughout the 40 days of Lent we have been heading toward the light, trying to shake the darknes
Culture
Writing a novel based on the Gospels is a tricky business, not only because the Gospels themselves are such special documents, but because the two literary forms have very different purposes. Both are narratives, of course, but the novel is, historically speaking, a relatively recent phenomenon and
Arts & CultureBooks
Some people would characterize the past five years of the Bush administration as inconceivably distasteful and disastrous For others the administration rsquo s policies are long awaited perfectly logical and admired Why such a discrepancy In American Theocracy which reads like a cross between a
The Word
The seven weeks between Easter Sunday and Pentecost constitute the Easter season While less well known than Advent or Lent the Easter season is important because we live in the light of Jesus rsquo resurrection at Easter and are challenged repeatedly to reflect on the difference that the Easter e
Editorials
For Christians throughout the world the dawn of Easter morning marks the celebration of the triumph of life over death, as we affirm our faith in the resurrection of Jesus. Religious faith is easily caricatured these days, dismissed as a failure of nerve before the ambiguities of real life or, more
More than 15 years ago I received a telephone call from a young rabbinic colleague who clearly found herself in a situation of great discomfiture. At the time, I held a position for the Reform Jewish movement not unlike the position I hold today at the Anti-Defamation League, directing interfaith re
Letters
Watchful Eye
In reading Will the Seminaries Measure Up? by Ronald D. Witherup, S.S., (3/20) the jump-off-the-page statement that there is only one question in the Instrumentum Laboris about homosexuality seems as if that should cover the sexuality issues in the church. What disturbs me is that the question should be, Is there evidence of any inappropriate sexual activity in the seminary? To me the implication of the first question is that sexual activity between a man and a woman is O.K. because it is evidence that the seminarian is not homosexual. Isn’t celibacy the issue here? Why does the church have to go around an issue before facing it? We the people of God have to continue to keep a watchful eye on the leaders of our church, who are not all honorable men.
Christine Ring
Of Many Things
Spring can be an elusive season. In New England, many residents I know claim it doesn’t exist. All they know is “mud-time,” a dreary interlude between the long winter and a brief summer. The survey crews of my brother’s engineering firm groan with the very thought of slogging
Ethics is about what we do. We form our moral judgments, our consciences; and we act on them or we refuse to. We change ourselves and our little parts of the world by our agency. We respond to duties or a desire to maximize happiness or a commitment to justice. Supposedly autonomous agents, we make
Scientists became excited not long ago when new observations suggested that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. It had been thought that expansion should be slowing. The new findings give additional support to the theory of the physicist Alan Guth that the universe immediately after its b