by Carol Powell
THERE ARE TWO feast days in June that illustrate so beautifully the essence of who God really is. I am referring to the feasts of Corpus Christi and the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Guest Columnists
Way Beyond the ‘New Atheist’ Nonsense
Given the intellectual flimsiness of their work, it’s best to look for cultural causes to explain the “New Atheists” popularity. And surely one factor here is the now-canonical notion in Western high culture that biblical religion is incompatible with modern natural science: an idea rooted in the notion that the “scientific method” is the only way to get at the truth. (William Shakespeare, call your office.)
God’s Creative Love Embraces All Life
Fourth in a series
REGULAR READERS of this column know I teach philosophy at St. John’s University, and much of what appears in this column is a mixture of philosophy and theology.
Thoughts on the Western Wall, 50 Years Later
PHOTOGRAPHS CAN capture exceptional moments in an iconic way, making the original experience “present” emotionally as well as pictorially. The photo of U.S. Marines raising the American flag on Iwo Jima’s Mt. Suribachi “means a Marine Corps for the next 500 years,” Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal said in 1945. The image of John F. Kennedy Jr.’s boyish salute as his father’s casket left Washington’s St. Matthew’s Cathedral in 1963 helped cement the “Camelot” myth into its seemingly impregnable place in American public life. The “Earthscape” pictures shot by Apollo 8 astronauts at Christmas, 1968, continue to play a not-insignificant role in today’s environmental movement.
I Didn’t Sign Up for This, Or Did I?
by Laura Kelly Fanucci
STRIPPING SOAKED sheets off a child’s bed for the third night in a row. Scrubbing vomit out of a carseat. Listening to a bedroom door slam with an angry “I hate you!”
Interreligious Dialogue With Edge and Purpose
THE EVENING OF Sept. 12, 2006, was, in a word, memorable. My wife and I were having dinner in Cracow with two of John Paul II’s oldest friends when my mobile phone rang and an agitated Italian journalist started hollering in my ear, “Have you zeen zees crazee speech zee Pope has given about zee Muslims? What do you zay about it?”
The Greatest Resurrection Gift
by Sister Ave Clark, O.P.
WHAT A BEAUTIFUL season Easter is – a time to sing joyously, Alleluia Alleluia! But I’ve been singing with some tears this Easter season for my dear friend Arthur.
Catholic Lite and Europe’s Demographic Suicide
TEN YEARS AGO, after my meditation on Europe, “The Cube and the Cathedral,” had appeared in several languages, I was invited to speak to the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium. There, I tried to make what seemed three rather obvious points:
Technology and Faith
I once asked some high school students to identify a couple of trees – a birch and an elm – based on pictures of their leaves. They offered a few sheepish guesses: Oak? Maple? They kept guessing.
A Hillarian Lesson for Church Leaders
PERHAPS IT WAS being “overcome with Paschal joy” (as the Prefaces for Easter put it). Maybe it was my guardian angel whispering in my ear. Perhaps I’m just getting older and thus less crotchety. But for a brief moment, at around 7:30 EDT on the morning of May 3, I felt a blush of sympathy for Hillary Clinton for the first time in 25 years.