To understand how Islamic extremism grew, one must consider Washington’s decades-long military support to Pakistan, and its protection of the Saudi Arabian monarchy.
By focusing on cultural and institutional microcosms, a documentary paints a picture of an entire society whose various activities are all embedded with chaplains.
Current students are taught by lay people. Our teachers were Benedictine monks, and teaching only begins to describe the role those virtuous men played in our lives.
If Janet Yellen decides to solve the problem of low lending interest by raising rates, does this benefit banks, government, hedge-fund managers, or the rest of us?
I will wear sweatshirts with bright appliqués / Of owls, and work for Head Start. Saturdays //
Will be the food bank; Sundays, church at ten. / Evenings I'll...
Arch after arch set in the brick, / Rosettes along them, pebble-thick; // Draped, helmed, armed figures, scribes with scrolls, / And eagles in their leafy holes:...
Historical reminders of how the Mediterranean connects Europe, Asia, and Africa at least as often as it separates the three continents from one another.
Girlhoods, boyhoods, childhoods, "freindships": Youth is the setting (and subject) in works by Jane Austen, J.M. Coetzee, Michael Ondaatje, and Leo Tolstoy.
These books offer two rewards: a lot of fascinating information, and an opportunity to think hard about history and being human. But they prompt some questions too.
The case for "youthful credulity" when reading; Don DeLillo's moral but discomforting vision; a new translation of Julian of Norwich's 'Revelations of Divine Love.'
A biographical novel for Thomas Hardy fans; a theory on how Christianity came to dominate Europe; short poems; and the fascinating (true) tale of a house in Germany.
How to remove ISIS is a puzzle whose solution will require resolve, patience, and international cooperation. For the United States to act alone would be a mistake.
So this, I realized as I watched, was still a church of surprises. Vatican II lived on. A weight accumulated over thirty-five years dropped from from my shoulders.
Process, papacy, and accompaniment: It may not be too early to wonder how Pope Francis's handling of the Synod on the Family fared on these three considerations.
Francis has introduced the possibility that the spotlight of moral judgment can can be shone back on those who make the judgments, and on their very act of judging.
John Henry Newman once said of the laity that the church would look foolish without them, and from the beginning the synod did indeed look foolish without us.
Aside from restatements of the teaching on sexual morality, there were glimpses of how a spirituality of discernment could infuse the church in its mission of mercy.
The election of Justin Trudeau resoundingly closes what many observers view as a dismal era in modern Canadian politics personified by conservative Stephen Harper.
Politicians and pundits regularly misapply Smith’s most famous metaphor, turning the “invisible hand” into an embodiment of the virtues of an unfettered market.
