Columns

Back in the day, when everybody was 12 years oldwell, that’s how it seemed to mewe had a colorful expression designed to convey our undiluted skepticism of a peer’s ill-considered and overly ambitious plans. O.K., we’d say, it’s your funeral. It was a handy way to distance ou

A couple of months ago, I wrote a gloomy, mid-winter’s column about a depressing round of Catholic school closings in and around my home in New Jersey. I referred to the early months of the calendar year as the saddest time of year for many Catholic school students, because often that is when

For parents and students in struggling Catholic schools, winter surely is the cruelest season. For it is now, in the first quarter of the year, that many parents and children learn that their school – for so many, their refuge – will not reopen its doors in September. Actually, this is a best-case s

Just after Christmas, and just before James Frey became the most discussed writer of fiction in American letters today, I was playing a Harry Potter board game with my kids. Now, I know very little about Harry and his friends, which is my loss. But playing along at least allowed the kids to believe

The question of how the United States is treating, or mistreating, prisoners captured in the war on terror has been simmering for some time. Indeed, it has been an issue ever since George W. Bush’s post-9/11 speech, when he committed the United States to a global fight against terrorism, a fig

While searching recently for a colorful quote about relations between church and state, I turned to a man who knew a thing or two about the subject: John Hughes, known to critics and admirers alike as Dagger John. Hughes, as most readers will know, was the bishop and then archbishop of New York from

Perspective is not among the virtues generally associated with youth. Like aching joints and sagging midsections, perspective is what you get when, like St. Paul, you at last put away the things of childhood. If, however, you paid close attention to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (and who didn&r

The Irish Republican Army’s recent announcement that it would dump arms and end its decades-long campaign against the British seemed oddly anticlimactic. Save for a brief episode in the mid-1990’s, the I.R.A. has been on a cease-fire since 1994. So its dump-arms order received only passi