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An Unwonted Uncertainty

From the April 1998 Print Edition

You get to a certain age and you know-or ought to know-what you think about important issues. Open-mindedness, when understood as a willingness to change one’s mind if presented with new information or deeper insight, is a considerable virtue. But open-mindedness understood as perpetual . . . . Continue Reading »

Passing in Review

From the March 1998 Print Edition

In this month’s While We’re At It, RJN makes passing reference to Christopher Caldwell’s astute article in the Weekly Standard on book reviewing practices at the New York Times Book Review (“The Reviewers Reviewed: Literary Boosterism in the New York Times ,” October 27, 1997). The NYTBR . . . . Continue Reading »

Infanticide for Beginners

From the January 1998 Print Edition

It was the issue of abortion that taught me to be suspicious of the word “reform.” It was the early 1960s and all right-minded people were in favor of “abortion reform.” I assumed I should be too until it gradually dawned on me, slow learner that I was, that people speaking of abortion . . . . Continue Reading »

Pastoral Concerns

From the November 1997 Print Edition

In his wise and engaging essay elsewhere in this issue (“I Do?”, p. 14), David Blankenhorn expresses puzzled dismay over the alacrity with which the clergy have participated in the contemporary trivializing of the marriage vow. “I do not understand,” he says, “why the . . . . Continue Reading »

Remembering the Riots

From the October 1997 Print Edition

Of the various disasters that littered the 1960s, none was more deleterious in its effects than the series of black riots that began in Birmingham in 1963 and became an annual rite of summer for most of the rest of the decade. The best-remembered of them occurred in Watts in 1965, but the two most . . . . Continue Reading »

Oh Canada

From the August/September 1997 Print Edition

It was quite by chance that I found myself in Canada on June 2, federal election day. It turned out to be an election that satisfied no one, and that may indeed mark one further step on the road to national dissolution. The ruling Liberal Party maintained its majority in the 301-seat Parliament, but . . . . Continue Reading »

Catholics at Home

From the May 1997 Print Edition

Elsewhere in this issue (“Catholics in Exile,” p. 9) Leonard R. Klein responds to my January column, “In Defense of Sectarian Catholicity.” He does not disagree with my argument that catholic orthodoxy can exist in places outside the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions (though . . . . Continue Reading »