With more than 620 Catholic hospitals serving the public around the United States, hundreds of Catholic medical clinics and shelters, and even a few Catholic-affiliated medical schools, Catholics have a keen interest in healthcare reform. That interest isn’t new. It’s rooted in experience, including the experience of trying to help people with little or no health insurance at all. . . . Continue Reading »
Also: Remembering 1989 by Michael Novak
For the ten years beginning in 1982, I had the privilege of serving on the Board of Radio Free Europe (for East-Central Europe) and Radio Liberty (for the vast Soviet Union). President Reagan had declared it the goal of the United States to win the Cold War, not just accept it as our long-term fate, and our job was to report the realities on the ground as accurately as we could. . . . Continue Reading »
In 2005 I accepted a position at CURE International, an evangelical mission organization. Today I serve as CURE’s director of government and foundation relations. At first blush, my story appears unexceptional—until I add that I am a Catholic. CURE’s motto is “Healing changes everything,” and the organization is devoted to overcoming brokenness on many levels. Although I did ponder the implications of accepting such a position, I must admit I was in no way prepared for the ramifications this job would have on my life. . . . Continue Reading »
A good cartoon ought to make its reader shake with laughter, but that was neither the intention nor the effect of the twelve cartoons depicting “the face of Muhammad,” published by the Danish newspaper Jylsend-Posten in September 2005. Over the course of five months, the cartoons became the impetus for Muslim protests and riots across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East that ultimately resulted in the deaths of more than two hundred people. The cartoons stood at the center of what seemed to be a monumental clash between the West’s reverential respect for free speech and Muslim piety. . . . Continue Reading »
The second day of November is a busy one for parish priests. On that day, we celebrate three Masses for the dead. These liturgies follow directly on the previous day’s joyous celebration of the saints in glory. The living—those souls who are truly living because they have entered heaven, the Land of the Living—and the dead—those who died in the state of grace yet need purification before they may enter eternal life—are joined to us in worship and prayer. . . . Continue Reading »
It was around two o’clock in the afternoon on the eve of the Day of All Saints, October 31, 1517, when Martin Luther, hammer in hand, approached the main north door of the Schlosskirche (Castle Church) in Wittenberg and nailed up his Ninety-Five Theses protesting the abuse of indulgences in the teaching and practice of the church of his day. In remembrance of this event, millions of Christians still celebrate this day as the symbolic beginning of the Protestant Reformation. . . . Continue Reading »
As a friend of mine observed recently, there is something medieval about Halloween. The masks, the running around in the dark, the flicker of candles in pumpkins, the smell of leaves and cold air—all of it feels ancient, even primal, somehow. Despite the now-inevitable preponderance of media-inspired costumes, Halloween seems, in execution, far closer to a Last Judgment scene above a medieval church door, or to a mystery play, than it does to Wal-Mart. . . . Continue Reading »
The life of James Tissot (1836–1902) brackets the Victorian age; his art reflects, to a remarkable degree, the preoccupations of that time. Not least of these were the Victorian Catholic revival and devotional mores on both sides of the English Channel. The tenor of that piety—and modern distance from it—is the unspoken subtext of the Brooklyn Museum’s decision to rescue a portion of Tissot’s The Life of Christ, a suite of 350 watercolors, from climate-controlled oblivion for a three-month airing. . . . Continue Reading »
We rhapsodize about “New England Autumns,” and for good reason; but, really, Autumn anywhere in the deciduous forests of North America, especially in the East—from upper Canada to the deep South—is magnificent, and far outshines anything the Old World has to offer. In those years in which I’ve found myself in some corner of Europe during the fall, I have never been able to suppress a certain feeling of disappointment at the limited palette nature employs there for what is surely my favorite of the seasons. . . . Continue Reading »
What kind of people are we becoming, and what we can do about it? A number of my friends have children with disabilities. Their problems range from cerebral palsy to Turner’s syndrome to Trisomy 18. But I want to focus on one fairly common genetic disability to make my point. I’m referring to Trisomy 21, or Down syndrome. . . . Continue Reading »