It was a crime against innocents - horrific and inexplicable - the kind that attracts worldwide attention and an outpouring of sympathy. Yet the shooting of 10 Amish girls in their one-room schoolhouse in Lancaster County, Pa., last October was particularly unfathomable because of who the Amish are
Part of this story is about a man, Paolo Dall’Oglio, an Italian Jesuit in his early 50’s who felt called to work with Muslims while he was still in his early 20’s. The other part is about a place, Mar Musa, a centuries-old monastery in the Syrian desert that had been abandoned for
The location for this year’s Ryder Cup epitomized the triumph of profit in Ireland. The organizers opted for the K Club, a mediocre golf course in comparison with such world-class links as Ballybunion, Lahinch, Portmarnock and half a dozen others. Certainly the infrastructure of the K Club is
Sometimes unexpected goodness just blows life open. It happened to me last year about six weeks after I was felled by a bad back. After I had declined an invitation from old friends for dinner because I couldn’t manage public transportation, they e-mailed back: “Come. We’ll send a
To Be Heard
Have we, and the media in general, completely forgotten that one of the last great peace efforts by the dying Pope John Paul II was to send Cardinal Pio Laghi, the former Vatican ambassador to Washington (Signs of the Times, 11/6), to try to talk President Bush and his
The most obvious lesson of the 2006 elections, in which the Democratic Party became the majority party in both houses of Congress, is that the election was a referendum on the leadership of President George W. Bush. The president was quick to accept the verdict of the voters, announcing the followin
The season of Advent has a timeless liturgical spirituality of longing, redemption and grace and an interesting, somewhat convoluted history. The several strands of its development illustrate the way in which the whole liturgical year has evolved over many centuries in relationship to cosmic time, t