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The political climate has changed dramatically in light of the Republican landslide in the fall elections and the Contract With America. But what astonishes me is not so much the content of the contract or the rhetoric of the debate, but the zeal and seeming joy with which social programs are being actually dismantled or put in line for their time on the block. This is coupled with the battle cry of “dismantle government,” a return of the get-the-government-off-our-backs rhetoric of the late 1980’s, all this dignified now by the rhetoric of devolution and states’ rights. More dismaying than anything else, however, is the underlying theme of isolated individualism, a cry of “I’ve got mine, now you get yours.” The Irish nationalist movement, for all its excesses, has at least recognized that the basis of reform is “Sinn Fein”–we ourselves. Our cry seems to be I myself. And we will be the worst for it.

From 1987, Peter A. Quinn on America’s immigration traumas

When Pope John Paul II slipped in his bathtub on the evening of April 28, he fractured more than his right thighbone. The papal itinerary for the next several months was also pretty well shattered, and before it can be rescheduled many disappointed people will be obliged to revise their own travel plans.

From 1993, Sidney Callahan, a Christian feminist, makes the case for Marian devotion.

Fifteen years ago, when the Democrats took over the White House, the editors thought health care reform was imminent.

Is the era of biblical enthusiasm in the Catholic Church on the wane?

I was born in the United States immediately after my parents arrived here from India. I was raised in a strong Hindu culture, attended weekly pujas, or ceremonial rites, and read the Vedic scriptures. Though my prayers were a childs constant stream of requests and broken promises, Hinduism provided

In These Pages: From July 17, 1993

From 1977 onward a significant number–perhaps 30,000–Episcopalians left the Episcopal Church/U.S.A. because it had begun to ordain women as priests; had changed or was changing radically on a variety of sexual-ethical issues, for instance, on abortion and on the indissolubility of Christian marriage, and had altered The Book of Common Prayer (B.C.P.) in ways that the departers perceived as falsifying certain Christian doctrines.

In These Pages: From March 7, 1992