Envision, if you will, the perfect Catholic church building. For some this would be an exercise of the imagination, one that takes into account the person’s idea of the sacred, of beauty, of practicality. For others it may be an exercise of the memory, recalling the space, sight-lines, colors

In the first few decades of the 20th century a remarkable number of English writers chose to become Roman Catholics Joseph Pearce who has written biographies of G K Chesterton and J R R Tolkien traces this phenomenon in Literary Converts a book that is not so much a study of theology or li

According to the Book of Genesis, the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern-day Iraq is the site of the legendary Tree of Life. Today the waters of these rivers bring death, according to UNICEF estimates, to some five thousand to six thousand Iraqi children each monthbecause the se

The enormous sow was the picture of contentment, lying on her side under a gazebo-like structure that protected her from the intermittent tropical rain. What’s her name? Nine-year old Xavier Laguna, the unchallenged director of the tour, was too well brought up to say so, but his face indicate

I am one of the lucky ones. I am one of the few who got out of addiction and off the streets. There are not many of us. Of the half million to three million men, women and children who are homeless in America, it is a simple fact that many will die on the streets or in jail or institutions.I have no

Bertrand Russell once remarked that intellectuals like savages are apt to imagine magical connections between words and things Diane Ravitch rsquo s history of American school reform is a depressing demonstration of the truth in Russell rsquo s quip Left Back is a chronicle of the idiocies visit

At age nine, I had an epiphany. I was watching my parents holding hands as we walked across a parking lot after a football game. It was late afternoon, and they were in front of me, their silhouettes tilted toward each other intimately. It was a jolt: the first time I perceived them as something sep

In September, news reports from England described yet another medical tragedy, complicated once more by the additional burdens of decision-making that medical technology now imposes on us. Congenitally joined (Siamese) twins were born on Aug. 8 in Manchester, sharing one heart and one set of lungs b

The best show in New York City is not on Broadway. It’s the spectacular three-dimensional film Passport to the Universe at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, a surreal sphere-inside-glass cube recently erected behind Manhattan’s crusty old American Museum of Natural History.You take th

McCarrick to WashingtonArchbishop Theodore E. McCarrick of Newark, N.J., was appointed archbishop of Washington to succeed Cardinal James A. Hickey. McCarrick is known as an excellent fund-raiser and spokesman for the bishops on domestic and international justice and peace issues. He is fluent in Sp

Chalices and ChairsLet me see if I have this right: According to the lead item in Signs of the Times (11/4), someone in the Vatican, honoring the ancient tradition of not allowing the laity to get too persnickety, decided that extraordinary ministers, after 20 years of doing so, may no longer purify

I once had a close encounter with Alan Greenspan chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in a ritzy restaurant in Washington named Galileo I was being taken there by in-laws I assume Greenspan was paying his own way My main worry on seeing him was not the check but his meal This is a man whose ev

Nearly a half century ago, an anthropologist named Cora Du Bois analyzed the values of U.S. society and concluded that Americans are optimistic activists. They expect that they and their institutions will succeed and succeed quickly. When they run up against a hard question, they want the answer tod

Imagine a couple in their mid-30’s. These people have a beautiful 20-month-old baby girl. But now, at 18 weeks of gestation, their second pregnancy goes awry. Prenatal diagnosis reveals that the developing baby has a spina bifida and hydrocephalus so serious that, if he survives until birth, h

Hard ChoicesIt is times like this that I most regret allowing myself to fall behind in my reading of America. On the eve of the elections, I am about one and a half months behind, and have just read The Faces Behind Us by Robert Heaney (9/30). The call to respond is strong within me.Dr. Heaney&rsquo

Before you begin to read The Sky Unwashed you think you know what you are in for Both jacket copy and preface explain that the novel deals with the Chornobyl nuclear accident The author born and raised in Chicago is a bilingual first-generation Ukrainian- American who has traveled often to Ukr