In All Things

Even if you re not watching HBO s excellent John Adams miniseries be sure to read Matt Malone s weekly commentary Matt s essays go beyond the ordinary thumbs up thumbs down criticism to explore what the series says about our nation s founding ideals and our own political moment In

The culture of campaign consultants is vile but not only because of the conflicts-of-interest and the greed and the narrow focus on winning over discrete groups of the electorate with particular tailored messages that do little to enlighten on the real problems facing the electorate The problem i

Don t miss Bill McGarvey s terrific interview on the Bustedhalo website with Timothy Radcliffe OP the former master general of the Dominicans and one of the most lucid of all Catholic writers And speakers Radcliffe is consistently one of the biggest draws at the LA Religious Ed Congres

N T Wright one of the greatest and certainly most prolific Bible scholars in the world has touched a nerve with his new book Surprised by Hope Rethinking Heaven the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church What happens when we die How should we think about heaven hell purgatory an

In his column in this week s America Fr John Kavanaugh takes another look at the infamous speeches of Jeremiah Wright and warns against dismissing his criticisms of U S society as the rantings of a crackpot In Friday s Los Angeles Times Michael Eric Dyson draws an intriguing comparison bet

Accompanying the pope s video message released today is this report from Catholic News Service Here is the Vatican text of Pope Benedict XVI s message in English and Spanish to Catholics in the United States The pope will visit the U S April 15-20 Dear brothers and sisters in the Un

Yesterday we discussed the fall of Clinton strategist Mark Penn as a good first step in undermining the culture of campaign consultants and the sad realization that there is unlikely to be a second such step In this morning s Washington Post E J Dionne calls attention to the other nefarious e

The demotion of Clinton campaign pollster and strategist Mark Penn illustrates a broader sickness in the political world that sadly will survive Penn s saga The single worst development within American politics over the past 40 years has been the professionalization of politics and the rise of

That is the nation not the magazine David Van Biema and Jeff Israely two of the most insightful religion journalists working today ask that question in an extremely provocative and counterintuive cover story in Time this week The American Pope Their argument is that the American brand

Over on his blog Benedictions David Gibson has a charming piece about the visit to the Vatican of Charlton Heston who died yesterday after a long and varied career playing saints presidents and other assorted geniuses Gibson was working for Vatican radio at the time Heston at the Vatican