In early April, the upper house of the Dutch Parliament voted to legalize what has been a legally tolerated practice for the last two decades: euthanasia and physician assisted suicide (PAS). Over the last decades Holland has moved to a more open and accepted practice of euthanasia and PAS by develo
Eudora Welty, who died on July 23 at the age of 92, will remain forever for me a Southern gentlewoman who honed her writing skills to do her life’s work: create lasting literature. She lived in Mississippi throughout the era of the civil rights movement, seemingly apart from the fray. But she
I knew the hate would be coming, but not with such ferocity, such immediacy and such prominence. Time magazine’s specially rushed issue portraying the World Trade Center atrocity ran one opinion piece, on its last written page. It was Lance Morrow’s Case for Rage and Retribution. But it
The bitter grievances that many in the poor nations have against the rich nations produced two explosions last month, one actual and one figurative. The terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 were as real as death. The quarrels that nearly blew up the United Nations Conference on Racism amounted to a symboli
Young adult Catholics are legion. Statistical surveys indicate as much. Yet when I step over the threshold of my parish church, I see very few of my peers.
These recent weeks I have been musing dreamlike over my seven Jesuit decades. Time and again I was struck by a line from that ever so popular hymn Amazing Grace. Eight monosyllables: ’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far. Grace. Not some vague abstraction. Rather, God’s ceaseless pres
A Deeper LookIn my search for meaning and the words to express it, Cardinal Avery Dulles provides a profound perspective. His reflections on the Shoah (9/17) apply equally to the incineration and crushing of over 6,000 people on Sept. 11. Following Cardinal Dulles’s sage advice, I have asked m