In early April, the upper house of the Dutch Parliament voted to legalize what has been a legally tolerated practice for the last two decades: euthanasia and physician assisted suicide (PAS). Over the last decades Holland has moved to a more open and accepted practice of euthanasia and PAS by develo

The bitter grievances that many in the poor nations have against the rich nations produced two explosions last month, one actual and one figurative. The terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 were as real as death. The quarrels that nearly blew up the United Nations Conference on Racism amounted to a symboli

A Deeper LookIn my search for meaning and the words to express it, Cardinal Avery Dulles provides a profound perspective. His reflections on the Shoah (9/17) apply equally to the incineration and crushing of over 6,000 people on Sept. 11. Following Cardinal Dulles’s sage advice, I have asked m

Pope’s Visit Produces Ecumenical Firsts Two ecumenical firsts occurred when Pope John Paul II visited Armenia at the invitation of the Armenian Apostolic Church, an ancient and independent Oriental Orthodox church that in recent years has improved its relations with the Vatican. He stayed at t

At first reading I thought Ronald Hill rsquo s tack toward poverty somewhat puzzling coming from someone whose specialty is social science and public policy I had expected many more statistical tables and analytic categories Basically through a compilation of data from those he interviewed and

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834 believed that one of the great miseries of his time was that it recognized no medium between Literal and Metaphorical it ignored the symbolic Too many of his age still followed the lead of 18th-century writers philosophers who distrusted mystery and poets who d

We want to thank all our readers and friends who expressed their sympathy and concern in numerous letters and e-mails. In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, it was good to know that we had friends praying for us all over the world.Our residence-office building is about

Combining archetypal psychology ecclesiology and ethics Eugene Kennedy in his latest book The Unhealed Wound sets out a disturbing vision of church malaise rooted in the distorted transference of sexual energy into power and manipulation Kennedy uses the analogy of the wounded Grail King of the

Tuesday, Sept. 11, may have changed everything. The unprecedented violence perpetrated against the United States now demands, many claim, an unprecedented response. In light of this horrific attack and understandable citizen outrage, it is not surprising that the composition of that response is bein

To write about Sept. 11, 2001, is to know the paucity of one’s vocabulary and literary skill. The words are so disproportionate to the tragedy that the temptation is to stop trying to describe it. John Paul II condemned it as an unspeakable horror and a dark day in the history of humanity, a t

Friday, Sept. 14On my second day at the site that the press now calls ground zero, it has become more difficult to gain access, even in a Roman collar. Today at Chelsea Piers, a sports arena turned supply warehouse, I hitch a ride in a huge tractor-trailer with two ironworkers from New Jersey. Becau

Vatican Signals Wider, Qualified Support for U.S. Military Action As Pope John Paul II made a four-day visit to Central Asia, the Vatican appeared to signal a wider—though still qualified—margin of support for eventual U.S. military action against terrorists around the globe. The pope&#8

When Virginia Woolf published Mrs Dalloway in 1925 her fourth novel she set out to demonstrate what she thought was needed in modern fiction an examination of the interior of her characters the stream of consciousness that holds each of us together from moment to moment What did not interest

In the language of the Western just war tradition, the attacks of Sept. 11 were indiscriminatethey (at least, those on the World Trade Center) involved a direct and intentional attack against civilians. But Osama bin Laden appeals to the tradition of Islam; he holds that such attacks are not only pe

My friend Mohammed rises every morning at 1:30 after five or six hours of sleep. He prays, showers, gets dressed and leaves his apartment near Crown Heights in Brooklyn by 2:30 or so. He walks the safe but never entirely secure streets of central Brooklyn until he finds his car, an old midsized seda

Well Covered IssueI commend America and the artist Michael Altman for the wonderful cover for your religious education issue (9/24). As an artist—and especially a collage artist—I am aware of the ingenuity of Mr. Altman as he created this composition. He succeeded in bringing together ph

In the first years of the 20th century Alois Alzheimer a German neurologist cared for a middle-aged woman with a marked personality change characterized by bizarre behavior and memory loss This woman died about five years after he first met her years characterized by an inexorable decline to a

Sept. 11, 2001, drove preachers of the Good News to tackle the classic questions of theodicy.

On Tuesday, Sept. 11, the United States was stunned by terrorist acts that exhibited the audacity and cunning of the terrorists and dealt a grievous symbolic blow to the power of the United States of America. The reaction in this country and almost everywhere else has been abhorrence and condemnatio