The Media, the War and Truth’
Last summer I attended a conference at which a rather distinguished panel of White House correspondents discussedattempted to defend is actually a more accurate descriptionthe coverage by the U.S. media of the Bush administration’s build-up, invasion and continued U.S. military occupation of I
Rights Talk and Its Remedies
This past autumn’s Supreme Court confirmation battles could be used as material for a short course in jurisprudence. Lesson One: Roe v. Wade Overshadows Everything (Why does abortion dominate American law and politics to a degree unheard of elsewhere in the world?). Lesson Two: Rights Absoluti
Did It Happen? Is It True?
Several years ago I gave a talk on the Book of Genesis to a full parish hall. After explaining that Chapters 2 to 11 are traditional stories rather than historical reports, I was confronted by an angry questioner: If these stories are fables, then what can we believe? What about Moses? What about th
Of Many Things
Of Many Things
Since I moved to New York City a year ago, I have taken to walking after dinner around the midtown neighborhood in which I live. It’s especially glorious in the summer; the setting sun lends everything a generous glow. Winter brings early darkness, trudging and multiple layers. In the daytime,
Letters
Letters
Embarrassed and Offended
We were embarrassed to have readers call our attention to the offensive advertisement that escaped our unknowing eyes and appeared in the Dec. 5 issue. Like them, we were deeply offended.
The offense was compounded when we learned in the advertisers reply to a concerned reader that he had intended his art as an…
Editorials
The Checkerboard of Life
In those countries that were once called Catholic, an ancient Gregorian chant that begins Te Deum laudamus (Holy God, We Praise Thy Name is a familiar English version) was sung on occasions of great public rejoicingthe ending of a war or the crowning of a king. It is still sung in many cathedrals on
Faith in Focus
A Winter Mass in Prison
One of the Little Sisters of the Gospel who is a chaplain at a prison on Rikers Island in New York City asked me to say the Sunday Mass there on what turned out to be a bitterly cold afternoon. Part of me was glad to go; it would reconnect me with my own past…
Books
Smoking Them Out
Readers of this absorbing book will learn a great deal about a politically ambitious English immigrant named Daniel Horsmanden who as a judge on New York rsquo s Supreme Court played a pivotal role in the transmutation of a sequence of robberies and suspicious fires in 1741 into a vast conspiracy
The Last Great Littrateur?
Man of letters Public intellectual Cultural critic Feuilletoniste Whatever he was exactly they don rsquo t make them like that anymore and the more rsquo s the pity Once upon a time writers like Edmund Wilson Mary McCarthy Irving Howe Alfred Kazin or even George Orwell armed only with the
Steel, Oil, Rails, Money
Over 70 years ago in 1934 the prize-winning biographer and historian Matthew Josephson published an eye-opening best seller entitled The Robber Barons Through prodigious research reports of congressional committees and ldquo inquiries rdquo done by state legislatures as key sources and gifted
Poetry
The Stone Not Cut by Hand
Nebuchadnezzar stared while the prophet blazed.
The Word
A Surprising Messiah
The magi who seem to have been Persian priests and or Babylonian astronomers came to Israel in search of the ldquo King of the Jews rdquo the Gentile translation for ldquo messiah rdquo or ldquo anointed one rdquo In ancient Israel priests prophets and kings were anointed In some Jewish
What Are You Looking For?
The first words that Jesus the Word of God speaks in John rsquo s Gospel are directed to two prospective disciples sent to him by John the Baptist Jesus asks them ldquo What are you looking for rdquo At the beginning of any spiritual journey it is important to ask what it is that we…
Columns
Snows of Yesteryear
Christmas was still a couple of weeks away on this December evening in New Jersey. Those intrepid reporters employed by the Weather Channel were deployed in various stormy locales, warning folks in the Northeast to batten down the hatches, or whatever one does when a snowstorm is imminent. This sort
News
Signs of the Times
U.S. Bishops Support Condemnation of TorturePolicies that are unclear about the torture of prisoners damage U.S. international interests and credibility and are an offense against human rights, said panelists, who included a retired Army general, a former adviser to the Departments of State and Defe
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts