Ethics is about what we do. We form our moral judgments, our consciences; and we act on them or we refuse to. We change ourselves and our little parts of the world by our agency. We respond to duties or a desire to maximize happiness or a commitment to justice. Supposedly autonomous agents, we make

Scientists became excited not long ago when new observations suggested that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. It had been thought that expansion should be slowing. The new findings give additional support to the theory of the physicist Alan Guth that the universe immediately after its b

"Let him easter in us," wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins in his poem The Wreck of the Deutschland. In this case easter is a nautical term. It means steering a craft toward the east, into the light. Throughout the 40 days of Lent we have been heading toward the light, trying to shake the darknes

Writing a novel based on the Gospels is a tricky business, not only because the Gospels themselves are such special documents, but because the two literary forms have very different purposes. Both are narratives, of course, but the novel is, historically speaking, a relatively recent phenomenon and

Jerusalem Church Leaders on Israeli ElectionsThe Patriarchs and church leaders of Jerusalem have issued the following statement, dated March 29, written after the elections in Israel. It read in part:The Israeli citizens voted yesterday for a new Knesset, from whose members a government is expected

One of my strongest primal memories is of the Knights of Columbus As far back as I can remember they were as present and as taken-for-granted as the Austin Boulevard Bus the Lake Street L and Pedersen rsquo s Ice Cream Store Commodore Barry Council of which my father was a member and once Grand

In his justly celebrated How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love With Poetry 1999 Edward Hirsch becomes both teacher and enthusiast We encounter a man at once passionate and informed his writing as infectious as it is instructive In his new release Poet rsquo s Choice Hirsch remains much the sam

There is a master of American letters working in our midst today of whom not many readers are aware For more than 23 years the novelist Stephen Wright has written uncompromisingly and astutely about America in meticulously crafted prose and witty realistic dialogue that reflects the spiritual wan

Junkyard BoundWhat is good for General Motors, quipped Charles Wilson, Dwight Eisenhower’s Secretary of Commerce, is good for the nation. As a former chairman of G.M., Wilson was not a disinterested party, but for much of the next half-century, as the auto giant and its employees prospered, so

The United States has enjoyed an extraordinarily long period of economic growth with very little inflation. There have been setbacks caused by high oil prices, the attacks on 9/11 and the dot-com crash, but in general there have not been the wide swings from high inflation to deep recession that wer