Every time I see a movie (which is a lot) and a priest or a nun appears on screen (which is not a lot) I steel myself for the worst. Though directors, screenwriters and actors have of late been able to furnish moviegoers with convincing portrayals of, among other difficult subjects, middle-aged toba

The death of cardinal John O’Connor of New York on May 3 marks the end of an era in the American Catholic Church. Without question, he was the most powerful American cardinal of his generation. New York makes a bully pulpit for any archbishop with talent and chutzpah, and Cardinal O’Conn

I’ve already read that, someone answered when I asked whether he had read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. What did you think of it? Oh, it was so long ago I can’t rememberit was in college, came the answer. Why not read it again, then? A blank look, as if to imply that it would be a waste

A good deal of the zing has gone out of the race for the presidency now that both John McCain and Bill Bradley have withdrawn. I didn’t realize the intellectual loss until last month, as I listened to Al Gore being interviewed by Jim Lehrer. Lehrer brought up the topic of abortion. Gore chose

Channel surfing a few months ago, I was mildly astonished to come across a rerun of Davey and Goliath, the Eisenhower-era claymation series produced, as I recall, under the auspices of the Lutheran Church. For those of you who weren’t TV-addicted children in the 1960’s, Davey and Goliath

The day after returning from a conference in Washington, D.C., in late February on the persistence of hunger in the United States, I took the subway to the upper west side of Manhattan to hear Mario Cuomo speak on a similar theme. His address was part of a forum called "The Intransigence of Pov