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Hank Gathers and Cultural Christianity

When the Loyola Marymount basketball team, riding the crest of an emotional high after the death of star player Hank Gathers, was making its spirited run in the NCAA basketball tournament last spring, CBS did a short feature on Gathers before one of the team’s games. At one point. Brent Musberger . . . . Continue Reading »

Schools on Purpose

For each of the past twenty-one years the Gallup Organization has conducted a nationwide poll on attitudes of the American public toward education. The latest results, like others in recent years, show an apparent contradiction between strong support for more parent choice among schools, and . . . . Continue Reading »

The Perfectly Raised Consciousness

Reflecting on the rash of outraged protests against allegedly sexist, racist, and homophobic slurs erupting in our public life, New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen tries to get to the root of the matter. It all has to do with “consciousness,” or so it seems. Some offenses against approved . . . . Continue Reading »

Michael Harrington’s Socialism

Socialism: Past and Future by michael harringtonarcade publishing, 320 pages, $19.95  If one is going to be a socialist, Michael Harrington’s variety is perhaps the best kind to be. Before his premature death from cancer this past year, Harrington worked with Dorothy Day to help the poor in . . . . Continue Reading »

Feminist Theodicy

Women and Evil by nell noddings university of california press, 284 pages, $25  For centuries theologians and philosophers have been struggling with the agonizing and bewildering problem of evil. Believing Jews and Christians cannot escape the perennial dilemma of reconciling the existence of . . . . Continue Reading »

Letters

Trust and Obedience First Things has done me the favor of asking Professor Gilbert Meilaender to review my book, The Giving and Taking of Life: Essays Ethical (April). May I dialogue briefly with some of his remarks? He attends, in the first place, to my central argument: that the moral import of . . . . Continue Reading »

Leaf with Berry

At the last rock of the last ledge of the last climb, retreat blocked, he went to the edge to look over his days and ways. The earth lay below in colors. He watched it with desire, but it was spread out far far below, and was unobtainable. At his foot was a green thing—a leaf, slick and . . . . Continue Reading »

The Shadows

Easy to forget, how shadows are light’s creatures, out of dark, out of thinning dark come delicately, then sharply. Sun puts them there. True to the last frond, bole, blowing crest, bush’s perimeter, by light shaped from darkness their elegant black duplications silent, accurate. On the hot . . . . Continue Reading »

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