This is a monumental work by any standard Gathered between its covers are words of activists and impassioned writers mdash essays by Henry David Thoreau John Muir John Burroughs the poetry of Walt Whitman searing revelations by Rachel Carson newly uncovered narratives of pioneering campaigns
America Staff
Posted inLetters
Letters
Dumb Brutes
Regarding Stafford Betty’s “Letter to a Reluctant Atheist” (4/14): It is very difficult to conceive of contemplative experience divorced from any theological construct. After all, human nature is rational. We strive to find answers to our fundamental questions, to find meaning in and around us. To experience anything at all without finding meaning or adequately understanding what has been experienced amounts to life in the animal kingdom.
Joanna Ionescu
Posted inLetters
Letters
The Hardest Word
As an Australian, I want to add to Margaret Silf’s “Sorry Business” (4/21): The apology given by our prime minister was extremely significant because it was delivered on behalf of the government to the indigenous peoples wronged by government policy. Because the wrong was a collective one (i.e., a social sin), it needed a response from no less than our national leader. The country had been waiting for many years for the apology to be given, and the feeling was one of great relief as well as understanding by many who had previously failed to understand the hurt.
Julie Purdey
Posted inIn All Things
Guiliani vs. Egan, Round Two
Here s the Anchoress with an exhaustive exegesis on the controversy that was bound to happen as soon as Mr Guiliani rose from his pew last Saturday Read the full post here James Martin SJ
Posted inLetters
Letters
A Watched Pot Never Boils In “Curbing Medical Costs” (3/10), Daniel Callahan starts a necessary discussion about health care. Unlike the proverbial frog in the pot of water, which did not detect the rising temperature until it was too late to jump out, the American people are becoming aw
Posted inLetters
Letters
National Heresy As I read Of Many Things on March 31, by James T. Keane, S.J., and his reflections on Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the nation’s capital, I was jarred by his unnecessary putdown of the Washington Nationals’ lineup as one that would not “ever be worth rememberin
Posted inCatholic Book Club
April Selection
The author of over 800 articles and more than a score of books Cardinal Avery Dulles S J is one of the church rsquo s pre-eminent theologians whose work is both faithful to tradition and engages the issues of society with clarity and intellectual rigor For the past 20 years he has been the Lau
Posted inLetters
Letters
Good Shepherds Regarding your editorial “Lost Sheep” (3/17): How do we find those lost sheep? And how many more sheep do we lose before we figure out what to do and how to do it? A de-Christianized culture drives us to be even more effective than we have been in the past. We cannot pres