David P. Goldman

Israel always matters . Biblical scholars have devoted endless pages to ancient Israel as a religious idea, and pundits have penned endless newspaper columns about modern Israel as a geopolitical entity. The deeper implications, however, have received less attention than they deserve in recent . . . . Continue Reading »

The current issue of the Jesuits’ international monthly Popoli features a blistering attack on Magdi Cristiano Allam and the circumstances of his conversion. The author is the prominent Italian Jesuit Fr. Paolo dall’Oglio, of the Deir Mar Musa monastery in Syria, who warns that Muslims . . . . Continue Reading »

A recent report in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz quotes Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone to the effect that the Church might remove a prayer for the conversion of the Jews from the newly revived Latin liturgy for Easter. Many Jewish religious authorities rankle at the prayer, which caused some static . . . . Continue Reading »

Iranian media have hailed the April 30 meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and Iranian clergy as a propaganda victory for the Islamic Republic. The meeting was the sixth in a regular series of encounters between Iranian clergy and the Holy See. The Iranian news agency carried the following item . . . . Continue Reading »

One Muslim organization has declined an invitation to meet Pope Benedict XVI at next Thursday’s Interfaith Meeting in Washington, the Associated Press reports , and another will attend out of respect for the Catholic Church, but not for Benedict. The Muslim Public Affairs Council, which will . . . . Continue Reading »

Kelefa Sanneh, long the New York Times ’ hip-hop correspondent, now shifts his attention to theology in a New Yorker profile of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Senator Obama’s pastor. Wright’s public avowal of the “black liberation theology” of James Cone raised eyebrows . . . . Continue Reading »

The world is now discussing Magdi Cristiano Allam’s baptism by Pope Benedict XVI during the Easter Vigil at St. Peter’s. Osama bin Laden recently accused Benedict of plotting a new Crusade against Islam, and instead finds something far more powerful: faith the size of a mustard seed . . . . Continue Reading »

In Reply to A. Dulles, S.J. There once was a poet named Keats Whom the would-be lampoonist defeats. Even Cardinal Dulles, Despite his keen skull, is Confusing Keats’ iamb for cleats. . . . . Continue Reading »

Reuel Marc Gerecht, formerly an Iran specialist for the CIA and now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, now thinks that Islam deserves serious study as a subject of strategic interest. “God may be kaput in most of the West, but he has hardly been reduced to the status of . . . . Continue Reading »