Like yeast in dough, for 40 years ecumenism has been quietly leavening the life of the churches. It is so much taken for granted that we often do not recognize how different the shape of Christian life is today from 50 years ago and how close the churches have grown. For centuries, hymnody divided C

Gregory Lee Johnson turned up in Dallas, Tex., for the Republican National Convention in 1984. To show his contempt for the policies of the Reagan administration, Mr. Johnson burned an American flag, while other demonstrators shouted approval. A Texas criminal court convicted Mr. Johnson of flag des

How long, O Lord, how long? As blood continues to flow, this prayer must be daily on the lips of both Israelis and Palestinians. After two weeks of the latest Israeli military invasion of northern Gaza, more than 90 Palestinians lay dead, hundreds maimed or wounded, most of them civilians. Every day

In a famous essay published in Thought in 1955, Msgr. John Tracy Ellis lamented the lack of intellectual achievement on the part of second- and third-generation American Catholics. Conditions have changed markedly since Ellis wrote. Today Catholics can be found on the faculties of the best American

"No young man believes he shall ever die,” said William Hazlitt, the 19th-century British essayist. That shrewd observation is contradicted in times of war. A 22-year-old machine gunner with a French battalion in Korea in the 1950’s wrote to his father: “In our time, when you

To judge by the presidential campaign, civil discourse in the United States lies exhausted and beaten alongside the campaign trail, a victim of the culture wars. Problems produced by the Iraq war are mounting, and the war remains the nation’s number one issue; but neither the candidates nor th