Columns

Is there a public institution in America more reviled than our national political conventions? (Picking on Congress doesn’t count.) Every four years the punditry class informs us that conventions are little more than glorified political commercials, which enlightened people ought to avoid for

One of the most beautiful and symbolic gestures of the Catholic faith occurs when a person is unable to get to church to participate in the Eucharist and the parish sends one of its members to that person with a consecrated host. The hunger must be satisfied. Without community a person is alone; wit

Dust coated my throat and stung my eyes. Carbon monoxide fumes mixed with the reek of deep-fried buffalo wings and cheese-soaked sausages made me nauseous. The noise was deafening—a nonstop cacophony of roaring engines, heavy metal music and over-amplified voices distorted through a second-rat

If you have seen news articles or television reports on stem cells and the ethical puzzles they present, you may wonder what all the fuss is about. There are at least two things you can be sure of: There will be more wonder, and there will be more fuss. The wonder is related to their origin and thei

Poor George W. Bush. It was bad enough when, during the primary season, a Boston reporter surprised him with a snap quiz about foreign leaders, including some from nations that Rand McNally himself might have had trouble spelling. Bush’s tentative answers inspired snickers in some quarters, al

Jesuit education fomented in me a rebellious mind and spirit. It forever altered my frame of reference: introducing a Catholic boy who lived safe in the knowledge of good and evil to a catholic worldview that held that all things are gifts from God, and transforming a basically docile open-mindednes

When word leaked out that ABC television had commissioned the actor Leonardo DiCaprio to interview President Clinton for a special Earth Day broadcast, the network’s top news executives huffed and puffed and said that surely nobody at ABC news would be so stupidtheir word, not mineto enlist a

I’m not sure what to do with the Easter season. I’m more comfortable, if that’s the right word, with Lent’s symbolic richness—dust, ashes, desert, wandering—than I am with the joy of the resurrection. Not surprisingly, at this time every year I’m less jubila

It appears as though the keepers of the world’s oil supply have decided to give us a break after all. Meeting in Vienna, the assembled princes (I didn’t notice any princesses) of petrol announced that they will increase production just as American motorists are beginning to dream of summ