Opinion
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February 16, 2015
On Ash Wednesday a couple of years ago, we had Mass in the morning at our Jesuit headquarters in Chicago and distributed ashes. That afternoon I met a young man new to our office, a recent graduate of Northwestern University, who told me right out that he felt bad because he had not been to Mass that day. I was impressed. Later, after dinner, I took a walk through the neighborhood. It was February, warm with an early hint of spring. And I kept spotting...
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February 16, 2015
We expect a great deal from the nation’s public primary education system. Though teachers are the frequent targets of some politicians—collateral damage in an undeclared war on public sector union membership—they accept each school day the challenge of preparing the next generation of Americans for productive and meaningful lives.
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February 16, 2015
The most predictable Washington ritual is the president’s State of the Union address. This civic liturgy includes an entrance procession of the Senate, Cabinet and Supreme Court followed by the president, who declares the union “strong” and offers his policies to make it stronger. Members of the president’s party repeatedly stand and applaud and the other party offers disapproving silence from their seats. The ritualistic political theater includes the...
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February 16, 2015
Mandated by the cardinals in the pre-conclave meetings to reform the Roman Curia, Pope Francis is taking his task very seriously and moving in a more radical direction than anyone had expected. His aim is not simply structural reform of the Vatican offices, though that is part of it; his primary goal is the spiritual reform of all those working in the offices of the Holy See, a reform of attitudes and hearts.
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February 16, 2015
When I count back through my predecessors as editor in chief, I figure just over three-fourths of them were Irishmen by descent. This would explain why the editors were always great sympathizers with the cause of Irish independence.
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February 16, 2015
Richard McBrien, R.I.P.
The late Rev. Richard P. McBrien’s outspoken manner won him a following among those devoted to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and critics among others, who saw his views—on issues ranging from women’s ordination to the virgin birth—as erroneous or misleading.
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February 9, 2015
‘There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.” These famous words of Thomas Merton convey the vision he experienced standing on a street corner in Louisville, Ky., on March 18, 1958. It was 10 years and nine months before his untimely death, but Merton had no way of knowing that—and even if he had been aware, through some preternatural vision, of the precise extent of his finitude, it would likely have increased...
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February 9, 2015
I started out from the center of Rome. Passing close enough to touch the outer walls of the towering Baroque church dedicated to the founder of the Jesuits, I traversed the cobbled streets that wind their way through this ancient quarter, emerging at last into the Piazza Venezia, the frenzied circus where several Roman roads converge. I then passed beneath the balcony from which Benito Mussolini declared war on the United States in 1941.
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February 9, 2015
Pope Francis’ recent visit to the Philippines provided many memorable moments, but one in particular stands out: Francis celebrating open-air Mass on a stormy, wet and windy day at Tacloban airport, wearing a yellow plastic poncho over his vestments.
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February 9, 2015
A few years ago, I read The United States and Torture, a collection of essays by lawyers, historians, journalists and scholars edited by Marjorie Cohn, a professor of law at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law. I had kept abreast of the news and thought I was up to snuff on the subject, but The United States and Torture showed me there was more to learn than I had ever imagined.