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»
We refer to it in our family as “the clown episode.” Over a dozen years ago our family visited a collection of rare Bibles open to the public as part of a Sunday service sponsored by Salt Lake City’s Evangelical churches, and my kids quit complaining when they saw balloons in the children’s class. Unfortunately, things went south when the hired clown berated my little boy for mentioning the Book of Mormon in a scripture discussion… . Continue Reading»
What Haruki Murakami has given us in his latest novel, 1Q84, is a loose baggy metaphysical monster of a fairy tale. The Japanese writer has said he wants to blend Dostoevsky and Raymond Chandler in his work, and he has done so in this novel with a triple portion: religious mysticism, murders and detective work, and the Little People… . Continue Reading»
When we go off to college, we’re not yet adults but no longer children, and we’re often on our own for the first time. No more bells ringing between classes, the everyday routines of high school are behind us. Our parents aren’t around to wake us up in the morning”or to set a curfew. For the most part we’re responsible for and to ourselves… . Continue Reading»
It has been a good year for Heidegger scholarship. Two new English translations released this summer provide readers unprecedented access to seminal periods of Heidegger’s philosophical development. Andrew J. Mitchell’s translation of the Bremen and Freiburg Lectures: Insight Into That Which Is and Basic Principles of Thinking includes key selections from Heidegger’s later, postwar period … Continue Reading»
Some centuries ago, someone (a politician, I suppose) disconnected theology from the rest of the academy, hustled it down a dark hallway, and locked it in a basement office with stern warnings to “Stay put” and “Behave.” Theologians, by and large a meek race, complied. They have spent their time holding long seminars and filling shelves of books with monographs on details of Scripture, on historical studies, on the arcana of systematic theology”many of them of great erudition and enduring value for the church… . Continue Reading»
I do not know how common it is for an individual, who has failed to view a single football game from September until January, to suddenly sit in rapt attention while watching the Super Bowl. And for that same person to sit through the pre-game shenanigans and post-game interviews, and, during the game itself, to stand up and cheer at all the right moments… . Continue Reading»
