If you are interested in the Vatican and its workings you will find this a good read Paul Hofmann Austrian by birth was for 35 years a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and for some of those years chief of its Rome bureau He currently lives in Rome and has been an acute observer of t
Deviance by definition presupposes a society rsquo s way of life bounded by norms and values that justify institutions and induce people to enact institutional and private roles This makes any study of deviance controversial both politically and morally When that study is sociological the cont
The following expropriation of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself appears in The Partly Cloudy Patriot, a collection of 19 reflective, often witty essays by Sara Vowell, author, radio artist, editor, literary critic, presidential essayist and self-admitted Clinton apologist: “The
This book blends several stories into a rich tapestry The governing story is that of the Carmelite community in Indianapolis from its beginnings in 1922 when three sisters made of a small house in New Albany their temporary quarters for a new foundation to the permanent monastery in Indianapolis
When The Changing Face of the Priesthood was published two years ago it created a virtual firestorm in the church The Rev Donald Cozzens was praised for his honesty and vilified for his unsportsmanlike conduct He had the nerve to say not only that a substantial number of priests and seminarians
At times we are tempted to wish that certain sayings of Jesus were lost or omitted from the Gospels Jesus rsquo sharp answer to the Pharisees and Herodians in today rsquo s Gospel might be one of these ldquo Repay render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God rdquo T
For 60 seconds or so this past summer, I found myself on the dark side of a capsized kayak being swept along in treacherous, frigid waters. My eventual survival was a mixed blessing, for the whole experience had the predictable but unfortunate effect of intensifying my preoccupation with death. In t