As this issue goes to press, we are a little over three weeks removed from the day terror struck. It has been a time of intense and widespread prayer on both small and grand scales. We hear people constantly talking about faith, about the comfort they find knowing that God hears. Such was a conversa

Pope’s Visit Produces Ecumenical Firsts Two ecumenical firsts occurred when Pope John Paul II visited Armenia at the invitation of the Armenian Apostolic Church, an ancient and independent Oriental Orthodox church that in recent years has improved its relations with the Vatican. He stayed at t

Tuesday, Sept. 11, may have changed everything. The unprecedented violence perpetrated against the United States now demands, many claim, an unprecedented response. In light of this horrific attack and understandable citizen outrage, it is not surprising that the composition of that response is bein

In the language of the Western just war tradition, the attacks of Sept. 11 were indiscriminatethey (at least, those on the World Trade Center) involved a direct and intentional attack against civilians. But Osama bin Laden appeals to the tradition of Islam; he holds that such attacks are not only pe

On Tuesday, Sept. 11, the United States was stunned by terrorist acts that exhibited the audacity and cunning of the terrorists and dealt a grievous symbolic blow to the power of the United States of America. The reaction in this country and almost everywhere else has been abhorrence and condemnatio

To write about Sept. 11, 2001, is to know the paucity of one’s vocabulary and literary skill. The words are so disproportionate to the tragedy that the temptation is to stop trying to describe it. John Paul II condemned it as an unspeakable horror and a dark day in the history of humanity, a t

My friend Mohammed rises every morning at 1:30 after five or six hours of sleep. He prays, showers, gets dressed and leaves his apartment near Crown Heights in Brooklyn by 2:30 or so. He walks the safe but never entirely secure streets of central Brooklyn until he finds his car, an old midsized seda

The United States is going to wage a war against terrorists, says President George W. Bush. Is this a just war according to the principles of the Catholic just war theory? For this issue we asked experts in the just war theory to examine this question and present their views.Before looking at the U.

Well Covered IssueI commend America and the artist Michael Altman for the wonderful cover for your religious education issue (9/24). As an artist—and especially a collage artist—I am aware of the ingenuity of Mr. Altman as he created this composition. He succeeded in bringing together ph