2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
Bebbington convincingly provided evidence that historians have either ignored or skewered data regarding the contribution of religious motivations and how an appreciation for the role of religion changes our take on this history Would they regard the role and influence of religion in North American ...
Flying back into Washington this afternoon after days in Boston and Indianapolis, seeing the standoff between the partisan voices of the political left and right, I have thought of proximate justice one more time When anything happens in the political world that is more just than not, it is because ...
What did Cathy help me to understand? The Holy Father says, "Faith transforms the whole person precisely to the extent that he or she becomes open to love "Faith is born of an encounter with the living God who calls us and reveals His love, a love that precedes us and upon which we can lean for secu...
Christine Jones, John Zucchi, and Comment magazine editor James K.A. Smith reflect on Pope Francis' first encyclical, Lumen Fidei
Or, as an alternative response to reason's seeming incapacity, faith becomes for many Christians, as Francis points out in Lumen Fidei, with a nod to Kierkegaard and his ilk, an irrational "leap" into the darkness, a work of the individual subject that can have no claims on our life in common How di...
Linking Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama leaves our editor-in-chief uneasy. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage has him seeing dictatorship coming through the door
Anyone conscious of America's original sin—slavery followed by segregation—could not be unmoved by the sight of a black president at the Lincoln Memorial, 50 years to the day after the greatest American speech since Lincoln himself was delivered right there by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr Pre...
The death of a brother she never knew brings Diane Weber Bederman that much closer to God
There was a time when the table was a thin place, a sacred space Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel described the Sabbath as a sacred place where God is present in time rather than space, in history rather than nature Then, for a moment, the mist rolls back, revealing a hidden place, a sacred space, a thi...
Barbara Kay reviews Andrew Bieszad's new book on the relationship between Islam and Christianity
If Bieszad's adventures in Islamo-correctness during his masters program branded him as a troublemaker at Hartford Seminary, and if his open letter about those adventures made him an academic pariah in Islamic Studies departments everywhere else, his commentaries on the history surrounding the marty...
Historian Heidi MacDonald sees a loss of community behind the disappearance of religious congregations
PS: But, in fact, as you say, urbanization and the growth of a robust number of women religious seem to go hand in hand In the last of our three conversations on consecrated life in Canada, historian Heidi MacDonald considers the demographics of congregations of women religious during the past 160 y...
Dr. Nicholas Newman says intellectuals who insist on scientific rationalism while defending equality, democracy and the rule of law should give their heads a shake
If these intellectuals are entitled to believe in free will and equality, why shouldn't the State defend these same beliefs? If these intellectuals have neither rational nor scientific grounds to accept, nor any transcendent belief in, human free will or human equality, why should their arguments in...
The narcotic effects of a market society are to blame for North Americans preparing funeral rights for marriage, argues Winnipeg writer Kurt Armstrong
What bothers me so much about "wanting" as the criteria for staying is not that this romantic idea runs about as smoothly as a train wreck, or that it shatters people's hearts, or that it undermines the communities where these relationships find their context and meaning, or that it champions the fl...
Where, Father Julián Carrón asks, is our first love?
VIII Do we expect, as Father Giussani challenges us, truly everything from the fact of Christ, or deep down are we not as naive (we say to each other) as in the beginning? Is Christ just one among many things, a starting point for our projects? Do we believe that Christ is the adequate answer for us...
Christine Jones, John Zucchi, and Comment magazine editor James K.A. Smith reflect on Pope Francis' first encyclical, Lumen Fidei
And while our nation’s editorial pages daily offer a knowledge that passes away with the news cycle, Lumen Fidei shares a "faith knowledge" that endures eternally—to the praise and glory of God but also to our common good. This is why Lumen Fidei’s unapologetic proclamation is its own kind of apolog...
Canada's former ambassador to the Vatican, Anne Leahy, on Benedict's abrupt goodbye and looming threats to religions freedom
C: That's a point you made on the panel at the Bridging the Secular Divide conference here in Montreal, where you said Canadian foreign policy has to take into account the role religion plays C: As a Catholic, one who has been very deeply involved in the Church, in World Youth Day and other events, ...
Paradise in place of parking lots; Stephen Hawking's academic boycott of Israel, and Russell Brand's Messiah Complex
Most of them are heroes with flaws? Hitler is not a hero, and Jesus did not have flaws, so that leaves Che, Malcolm X and the Mahatma as possible taxonomic candidates, and one would find it hard to put the last in the same category as the first two Hawking has been to Israel before, but this time th...
Travis Smith talks Kid'n Slave with his son; Julia Nethersole on growing up like Charlie Brown.
Son: Dad? Dad: And is slavery good or bad? After all, if you work hard and don’t give up, you can do anything you want, right? Well, Charlie Brown may have a different view on things Dad: Well, do you think that slaves ever stop being slaves? Or do you think that they usually stay slaves their whole...