As this is written schools are still closed subways are still largely sealed thousands of New York and New Jersey citizens have had their homes damaged demolished or washed away To some the real question is What effect will the storm have on the election Much of the turf that has been swam
America Staff
Posted inLetters
Letters
Lesson in Civics Re “School Daze” (Editorial, 10/15): As a former Chicago high school teacher, resident and taxpayer, I must strongly disagree with your conclusion that the strike was “civically irresponsible.” Public-sector unions are under immense attack. The administratio
Posted inIn All Things
Readings: The VP Debate
Vice-presidential debate moderator Martha Raddatz who had gained an admirable reputation for her coverage of Iraq war saved one of her best questions for last a self-definition question that makes the candidate dig into his soul and come up with something both credible and politically prudent Bo
Posted inLetters
Letters
What Muslims Think The Cardinal Bea Center at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome continues the work described by John Borelli (“In the Beginning,” 10/1). I received a masters of theology in interreligious dialogue, specializing in Islam, from the Gregorian. During my studies, I
Posted inLetters
Letters
Preventing a Holocaust I know not how it happened, but your editorial “Diplomacy and Disarma-ment” (9/24) fails to mention that Iran has threatened genocide on the Israelis not once but many times. Yet somehow the United States and Israel are found morally lacking and must “come up
Posted inFrom Our Archives
Our Readers on Joe McCarthy: From April 17, 1954
As promised last week, we offer further excerpts from our exceptionally heavy “McCarthy mail.”
EDITOR: Congratulations to Fr. Hartnett on his fine exposition of the McCarthy investigations and their effect upon the common good … It indeed strikes at the heart of the issue.
Posted inFrom Our Archives
From April 22, 1967
A look back at papal criticism of a system that “considers profit as the key motive for economic progress.”|”
Nothing in Pope Paul’s “On the Development of Peoples” has provoked more comment than §37, on demography. Running a respectable second, however, is § 26, on liberal capitalism, together with a few related sentences in §§33 and 58. The Communist press was jubilant over what it called the Pope’s anticapitalism. Typical was the headline over the encyclical story in Rome’s Communist daily, L’Unita: “The Crisis of Capitalist Society in the Social Encyclical of Paul VI.” On the other hand, the business-minded press was perplexed and critical. Under the title “A Blessing for Secular Error,” the Wall Street Journal dismissed the encyclical as an “entirely worldly analysis.” It did not believe that the Pope’s “warmed-Marxism” would be of much help underdeveloped countries.
Such reactions, revealing an egregious ignorance of the Church’s social
Posted inFaith
Adoption: A Life-Giving Choice
Our experience, like that of many adoptive parents, began in heartache: the inability to conceive. Few experiences challenge faithful Catholics as much as infertility, which even in light of contemporary biblical theology still feels like alienation from God’s greatest gift.
Posted inFrom Our Archives
From December 28, 1929
Remembering Dr. Clement Clark Moore, author of “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”|”
Strange and roundabout are the ways of Fame! Betsy Ross, like thousands of other Colonial daughters, could ply a handy needle, but because she worked on a certain square of material she stitched her way into immortality. Newton saw an apple drop from a tree and gave his mind to unraveling the great Law of Gravitation that has made him famous. The political importance of Sir Walter Raleigh is known to historians, but it is the rain puddle, over which he flung his velvet cloak in a gesture of respect to the haughty Elizabeth, that brings him popular fame. So that celebrated poem, “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” the most thumb-marked linen book in the nursery, the “best seller” in juvenile literature at Christmas, was the fruit of an inspired moment, while a man hurried through a swamp of snow on a mission of kindness one Christmas Eve over a hundred years ago.
Dr. Clement Clark Moore, a
Posted inFrom Our Archives
From March 26, 1949
From 1949, a look at the menacing debate surrounding the “battleground of history.”|”
In the spring of 1947 the statesmen of the world were feverishly seeking a solution to the tormenting Palestine problem. Pan-Arabism and Zionism were locked in menacing debate over their conflicting claims to what Hilaire Belloc called “The Battle Ground” of history. While the statesmen and lawyers and propagandists toiled at Lake Success, the Catholic Near East Welfare Association reminded the Secretary General of the United Nations on May 8 of an almost forgotten factor in any just settlement of the problem. Disputing the claims of neither side, prescinding wholly from all political considerations, its statement, “The Christian Factor in the Palestine Equation,” outlined the Christian stake in the Holy Land and indicated certain guarantees regarded as indispensable for the protection of Christian interests.
Events seem to have obscured memory of “The Christian Factor in the Palestine E