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Christians and Economic Development

The 1980s may well be looked back upon as a decade of intellectual reformation in the so-called North-South debate. A burst of revisionist thinking has affected recent discussions of Third World economic development and may offer a harbinger of better policies vis-a-vis the world’s poor. There . . . . Continue Reading »

Liberalism and Catholicism

A number of commentators— among them David Hollenbach, John Langan, and myself—have argued that the American Catholic Bishops' pastoral letters, and even the Pope's recent encyclicals, represent in some important ways a rapprochement with liberal ideas and . . . . Continue Reading »

Catholicism in America

Catholicism and the Renewal of American Democracy by george weigel paulist press, 218 pages, $11.95 Forty years ago, Evelyn Waugh wrote a piece for Life magazine entitled “The American Epoch in the Catholic Church.” In a manner only mildly condescending and with controlled admiration . . . . Continue Reading »

God’s Affable Principle of Cohesion

I Merely the look of it, buttercup at the edge of the “Lawn Falls” where the water seeps, sweeps down to the seaside is enough to carry the viewer in awe over the edge of reason to a logic beyond the modest mundane: the rocks being pitted are jointed by torrents of balm-like uproar. Love’s . . . . Continue Reading »

Old Havana

. . . pongee-colored girls in white dresses the sun shone through in multiple haloes where they lay alongside streets like sofas reading José Martí behind potted ferns in avenue-knolls paved with Key West grass and long-leaved tobacco shaved and scented like bark strips. . . . . Continue Reading »

Ut Pictura Poesis

The St. Jo River whirling full around the South Bend rich and dark as a negresse en chemise bedaubed with cochineal: mauve, purple tinting the water from the Odilon Redon sun setting. As we drove, the sunset fell over “The Goats” in Peru, Indiana and a crescent moon came up the color of . . . . Continue Reading »

A Culture of Poverty?

I hadn’t thought of Jerry Carter for at least five years. I probably wouldn’t have thought of him for at least another five if it hadn’t been for the report of the National Research Council’s Committee on the Status of Black Americans. I met Jerry in 1982. I was a reporter for the Chicago . . . . Continue Reading »

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