The culture of campaign consultants is vile but not only because of the conflicts-of-interest and the greed and the narrow focus on winning over discrete groups of the electorate with particular tailored messages that do little to enlighten on the real problems facing the electorate The problem i

Don t miss Bill McGarvey s terrific interview on the Bustedhalo website with Timothy Radcliffe OP the former master general of the Dominicans and one of the most lucid of all Catholic writers And speakers Radcliffe is consistently one of the biggest draws at the LA Religious Ed Congres

N T Wright one of the greatest and certainly most prolific Bible scholars in the world has touched a nerve with his new book Surprised by Hope Rethinking Heaven the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church What happens when we die How should we think about heaven hell purgatory an

In his column in this week s America Fr John Kavanaugh takes another look at the infamous speeches of Jeremiah Wright and warns against dismissing his criticisms of U S society as the rantings of a crackpot In Friday s Los Angeles Times Michael Eric Dyson draws an intriguing comparison bet

Accompanying the pope s video message released today is this report from Catholic News Service Here is the Vatican text of Pope Benedict XVI s message in English and Spanish to Catholics in the United States The pope will visit the U S April 15-20 Dear brothers and sisters in the Un

Yesterday we discussed the fall of Clinton strategist Mark Penn as a good first step in undermining the culture of campaign consultants and the sad realization that there is unlikely to be a second such step In this morning s Washington Post E J Dionne calls attention to the other nefarious e