I did a good bit of traveling in early June. Only in mid-month did I settle back into my regular routines, walking to work through midtown Manhattan with my miniature dachshund, Mabel. As I traversed the avenues, I noticed a striking fact: Pride flags are conspicuously absent. Yes, a large Pride . . . . Continue Reading »
Some Christians regard the thought of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik as so anti-Christian that Christians should take no interest in it—as, indeed, many of Soloveitchik’s disciples take no interest in Christian thought. This is unfortunate. As Matthew Rose demonstrated recently in these pages . . . . Continue Reading »
I do not understand war. Even in the present time, for all my deeply felt moral and religious commitments touching on today’s conflicts, the reality of war itself seems to engulf my certainties. I am often at a loss for words and prayers. In 2018, I attended a church service in a small . . . . Continue Reading »
Many people have been amazed by the capabilities of ChatGPT and the rapid advances in artificial intelligence. But something even more remarkable has now appeared: a book, described by its publishers as “plumb[ing] the depths of the science and philosophy of decision-making,” that claims to have . . . . Continue Reading »
In March 2022, the Nordic Bishops’ Conference sent an open letter to the president of the German Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg. The Nordic bishops began by mentioning their historic debt of gratitude to the German Church: In Norway, for instance, the nineteenth-century . . . . Continue Reading »
In a glass case at Mozart’s birthplace in Salzburg is a small wax doll. Its eyes look demurely downward, it wears a crown several times the size of its head, and it is clad in a richly embroidered garment that looks like nothing so much as a sumptuous eighteenth-century ball gown. This is . . . . Continue Reading »
Thank you for printing my friend Fr. Blake Johnson’s excellent piece on women’s ordination (“Mere Priestesses,” May 2024). Although some have misread C. S. Lewis and likely will misread Fr. Johnson as accusing women priests of being sexual deviants, the problem has nothing to do with the act . . . . Continue Reading »
Is the Second Vatican Council receding in the church’s rearview mirror? Has the Francis pontificate raised new and difficult questions about the exercise of papal authority? Is the Roman Church poised to become non-Western? Can popes and bishops teach effectively in a time of rampant individualism . . . . Continue Reading »
To whom does a language belong? One might think it the possession of all who speak it. But as anyone who has learned a foreign language can attest, one receives such a language as an ill-fitting garment, awkward until broken in through sustained and strenuous effort. Or perhaps a language is the . . . . Continue Reading »
Imagine the shell you findon the beach, a large conch,half-buried, glistening inmorning light, waiting to belifted, rinsed, held cupped to your ear: This is your body,listen and hear; blood flows,pulse ticks, the ocean hums,waves curl, crest, hushed, foamlicks wet sand, thoughts rise, dissolve, wind . . . . Continue Reading »
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