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Eight Hundred Thousand

This year, the United Nations proclaimed April 7 an International Day of Remembrance. For in the 100 days beginning on the eve of that date 10 years ago, 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda. The divisions between the Tutsi and Hutu peoples in Rwanda were not always as deep as those that separated t

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The Cross and the Empty Tomb

In Bach’s oratorio The Saint John Passion, a bass aria begins: “Eilt—Hurry, hurry you suffering souls.” In an urgent whisper, the chorus responds: “Wohin—where to?” The soloist replies, “Nach Golgotha—to Calvary.” That chorus represents the

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Trading Jobs

For nearly a generation, conventional wisdom held that high-tech would be the wave of the future. Job seekers were advised to train in electrical engineering, software design and information technology. Now, as the jobless economic recovery sputters on, there are cries of alarm that high-tech jobs a

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Food, Shelter or Medicine?

The United Nations has reported that the number of chronically hungry people worldwide is increasing at the rate of five million annually. But even here in the United States, richest of all nations, hunger and food insecurity (limited access to nutritionally adequate foods) have been steadily rising

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The School Question

Ninety years ago, a woman named Caroline Pratt started a school for a few children from Italian and Irish working-class families in the Greenwich Village section of Lower Manhattan. She took this step because she thought the neighborhood public schools were humdrum and ineffective. Her experiment wa

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Fraternal Correction

The National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Young People is to be commended for its candid and balanced report. It is an example of the kind of lay participation in church governance that the sexual abuse crisis has taught us is necessary today. The report calls for transparency and

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Immigration Reform and the Bush Proposal

"Our immigration system is broken and…in need of reform.” So said Bishop Thomas Wenski of Orlando, Fla., chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Migration in a statement in early January—soon after President Bush issued his proposal on Jan. 7 about this controversial issu

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Numbers Count

In the contest for the dullest book published by the federal government, the annual budget would appear in almost everyone’s top 10 list. Most Americans are numerically challenged, except when it comes to sports statistics. If presidential candidates devoted an evening to debating the federal

Posted inFrom Our Archives

The Movie: Defense and Dissent

The publication of the bishops’ document just before Lent will be followed closely–on Ash Wednesday, in fact–by the release of a controversial movie "The Passion of the Christ," produced and directed by the actor Mel Gibson, in over 2,000 theaters across the United States This may

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