The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, the most important Catholic event since the 16th-century Council of Trent, was solemnly opened by Pope John XXIII 50 years ago, on Oct. 11, 1962. Commentators ever since have taken that date as the beginning of the Catholic Church’s engagement with modern society and culture… . . Continue Reading »
The stories from the Bible so often come to us as isolated examples of pious or ethical behavior, that it’s frankly a relief to read Yoram Hazony’s book, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture. Hazony reads these stories intertextually across the books in order to argue for a number of provocative conclusions from the Hebrew Scriptures. It’s a great read, but I want to press his argument on two points… . Continue Reading »
During the Second Vatican Council, a little-known moment occurred when Msgr Alberto Gori, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, rose to raise a question. Why, he wanted to know, was so little being said about “the eternity of hell” and the possibility of “personal damnation”? Twenty-five years later, a prominent Cardinal voiced similar concern: “Belief in eternal life has hardly any role to play in preaching today.” … Continue Reading »
Eric Hobsbawm, who died this month at a grand old age of 95, was a lifelong apologist for some of the most monstrous crimes in history. Despite this, the British Establishment welcomed him to its bosom. He was professor and then president at my alma mater of Birkbeck College at the University of London. Prime Minister Tony Blair consulted him and advised the Queen to make him a Companion of Honour in 1998… . Continue Reading »
Not too long ago, the ethics of medicine were pretty straightforward. Inspired by the Hippocratic Oath, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other medical professionals generally followed the “do no harm” maxim, seeing themselves (ideally) as duty-bound to protect and preserve all human life… . Continue Reading »
Keith Donohue’s most recent novel is a chain of interlinking stories in the tradition of The Canterbury Tales, The Decameron, or, closer to our time, Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, with a dash of Flann O’Brien, Groucho Marx, and Tristram Shandy. It’s very funny, raucous, erotic, tender, tragic, and”gasp”entertaining… . Continue Reading »
This Sunday, October 7, Pope Benedict will name Hildegard of Bingen a Doctor of the Church, having in early May extended her cult to the universal Church to remove all doubt about her status as a saint. Doctors of the Church are saints whose sanctity and doctrine have benefited the Church to great advantage. What might Benedict wish for us to learn from St. Hildegard, whom he has called “a true master of theology and a great scholar of the natural sciences and of music”? … Continue Reading »
Next time Professor Karen King receives an oblong scrap of papyrus with an explosive text and an owner wanting to remain in the shadows, she will probably pass. It is now more than likely that the “Jesus had a wife” manuscript, which she sensationally unveiled in Rome a couple of weeks ago, is a fake… . Continue Reading »
The foreign policy debate in the United States has often been peculiar, in that it’s not infrequently about the United States rather than the world. Throughout history, other great powers have thought about world politics in terms of national interest. Americans typically think about the world through the prism of their image of America… . Continue Reading »
Based on a report in yesterday’s Bloomberg, the decision by the Obama Administration to require many religious institutions to provide contraception through existing health care plans is bearing electoral fruit: President Obama leads Mitt Romney among women by a remarkable 18-point margin. Though the HHS mandate represents an expansion of government power into the heart of many religious institutions, efforts to resist this expansion were portrayed by HHS Secretary Sebelius as a “war against women,” … Continue Reading »
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