In the fantasy novel That Hideous Strength, a young social scientist, hoping to break into the inner circle of the prestigious National Institute for Coordinated Experiments (acronym: NICE) discovers that the goal of the institute is to eliminate organic life. Filostrato, a physiologist who hates tr
Hours after the 109th Congress convened in early January, Republican majority leaders delivered this startling notice: they intend to transform public aid to the poor into a compulsory work program that offers little opportunity for recipients to lift themselves from poverty. This transformation was
Catholic Christianity’s understanding of and relationship with Judaism and the Jewish people was radically transformed by the the Second Vatican Council’s declaration, “The Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions.” On Oct. 28, 1965, Nostra Aetate formally declared t
François de La Rochefoucauld, a 16th-century French aristocrat, made a name for himself by writing tough-minded epigrams that he called maxims. In one of these philosophical wisecracks he noted: “Death and the sun are not to be looked at steadily.” All the same, there are some people wh
Missed the Mark
In reviewing Million Dollar Baby (Of Clay and Wattles Made, 2/14), Richard A. Blake, S.J., surprised me by the reference to this intelligent, compassionate priest. I felt that the ordinary, everyday pastoral ministry of the priest sure missed the mark in this film.
C. S. Lewis compared the risen life to the lightness of an early summer morning when we feel one with sunlight and the gentle air. Of such a morning he wrote in The Weight of Glory, We do not want merely to see beauty...we want to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into
In the black-and-white photo, my sister and I stand side by side, looking tanned from the Miami sun. We are decked out in crisp Easter finery, complete with straw hats. We are bursting with pride, because in our hands we are cradling something that for us represented the essence of Easter joy: two v