Cowards

A story about Amtrak’s new beef-powered train: Taking Amtrak’s Heartland Flyer train between Fort Worth and Oklahoma City sometime in the next year? You will be hitching a ride on the first beef byproducts-powered biodiesel train. The train, which runs on 80% regular diesel and 20% . . . . Continue Reading »

Indignity at the Bottom of the Lake

“To live with dignity, to die with dignity” is the motto of the Zurich-based assistant suicide clinic, Dignitas. But apparently not to rest with dignity. Divers have found, according to the British Daily Mail , “scores of urns containing human ashes” at the bottom of Lake Zurich . . . . Continue Reading »

How to Think About Immigration

With a stroke of a pen, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed the country’s strictest state law governing illegal immigration—and revived the national debate over immigration. Peter Meilaender examines the issue in our latest On the Square feature, ” Defending the Innocent: Arizona and . . . . Continue Reading »

A Parish for Mad Men?

Every Sunday at 6 P.M., the Church of the Ascension, a Catholic parish on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, offers a Mass at which, according to the church website, “a jazz trio plays original compositions, arrangements of traditional hymns and music by composers such as Billy Strayhorn and . . . . Continue Reading »

Molesters for Hundreds of Years

I spoke, in the new issue of the Weekly Standard , about the effect of the atmosphere created by all the reporting on clerical abuse: The best sign of such hysterical moments may be the difficulty of anything sane or sensible being heard in them. As Newsweek noted on April 8, the surveys and . . . . Continue Reading »

Were the Church Fathers Pacifists?

If you ask noted pacifist John Howard Yoder , the answer is unequivocally “yes.”  Writes Yoder: The answer of the pre-Constantinian church was negative; the Christian as an agent of God for reconciliation has other things to do than to be in police service . . . . Christians saw . . . . Continue Reading »