Opinion > Issues
Sarah Palin blasts Obama’s radical abortion policies
If you want to extract information from suspected terrorists, force them to listen to an endless loop of Sarah Palin speeches. I guarantee it would work. (Fortunately, John McCain is against torture.) Yet despite her grating voice and her muddled syntax, Palin managed on Saturday to pull off an effective pro-life speech that artfully strung … READ MORE >
Opinion > Issues
The Right’s Hypocritical Crusade against Wall Street
I almost never agree with First Things on economic policy, but Robert T. Miller was right last week when he warned that “those on the political right need to make sure that the Republicans in Congress do not through ignorance or stupidity misunderstand conservative economic principles and so lead us into economic disaster.” Unfortunately, … READ MORE >
Opinion > Issues
They’ll Believe in Anything: Study says atheists are more irrational
A new Gallup study, “What Americans Really Believe,” suggests that if anti-religious crusaders Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins want a more rational, less superstitious world, they should encourage people to go to church. A recent Wall Street Journal article reported that, according to the study… “…traditional Christian … READ MORE >
Opinion > Issues
Bill, the Times They are a Changin’…
I could hardly process the thoughts and images that flooded my mind as I watched Bill Clinton angrily chastise a group of pro-life student protesters from Franciscan University in Ohio this past weekend. After all, this was the same Bill Clinton whose political aspirations were forged during the antiwar protest years of the sixties, the same … READ MORE >
News > Issues
Anglican bishops decry the ‘new creed’ of extreme capitalism
A trillion for the Iraq War, almost as much to rescue Wall Street, but basic health care for all is too expensive? Why aren't Christian leaders in the U.S. saying as much? In England it's a different story: "[T]he Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, warned in a magazine article that modern devotion to the free market is a form of idolatry and that Karl Marx was morally right in his analysis of the power of 'unbridled capitalism.' He believes that Marx's economic theories, as implemented by authoritarian state regimes, have proved equally wrong and harmful to unfettered market ideology, but that the protest against a greed-driven system is one that should be taken seriously." READ MORE >
Magazine > Issues
A Question of Empathy
How science is rehsaping the abortion debate READ MORE >
News > Issues
Bob Guccione Jr. finds his way back to church
"For Gooch, an erstwhile altar boy who describes himself as 'a lazy but devout Catholic,' science is incomplete without the contemplation of faith. 'I have no trouble whatsoever accommodating, side by side, the ideas of multiple universes and the Immaculate Conception...'” READ MORE >
News > Issues
Hiroshima: Has the ground zero of the nuclear age become too ‘normal’?
...Hiroshima is still here to remind us of what happened when we first unleashed our "device" and how it can never happen again—supposedly. That's what everyone says after visiting Hiroshima, the statesmen and citizens who sign the guest book at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. We will never forget. But maybe we will. The very fact that Hiroshima is thriving with its KFC and Starbucks, with the carefully manicured lawns of its 'Peace Memorial Park'—the only evidence that hell was unleashed here—may have the opposite, anodyne effect. This is not John Hersey's Hiroshima, the Hiroshima of the horrific immediate aftermath, but is to a certain extent a Hiroshima that says a nuclear detonation is a transient thing, something that's eminently recoverable from with a little time and some good landscaping." READ MORE >
News > Issues
Catholic College Leaders Expect Pope to Deliver Stern Message
"School presidents insist that truth-seeking is part of their institutional purpose. 'Every university is committed to the pursuit of truth,' said Georgetown President John J. DeGioia, 'and we want to ensure that there is the opportunity for both academic freedom and for the free exchange of ideas and opinions across all issues.' But David Gibson, the author of a Benedict biography, said the pope will ask, 'If you're not going to be an authentically Catholic, orthodox institution, why should you exist?'" READ MORE >
News > Issues
Artist hanged herself after aborting her twins
Her suicide note read: 'I told everyone I didn't want to do it, even at the hospital. I was frightened, now it is too late...' The inquest heard that Sylvia Beck, the victim's mother, wrote to the hospital after her daughter's death, saying: 'I want to know why she was not given the opportunity to see a counsellor. She was only going ahead with the abortion because her boyfriend did not want the twins. I believe this is what led Emma to take her own life - she could not live with what she had done.' The doctor said: 'I discussed Emma's situation with her, and wrote on the form, 'Unsupported, lives alone, ex-partner aware.'" READ MORE >
Opinion > Issues
Former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dies
Over on his Tumblr, Radar Online Editor Alex Balk takes a moment to note the passing of former secretary of agriculture Earl Butz. First, he lauds fellow blogger Daniel Radosh for being willing to print what the papers won’t, namely, the actual quote that eventually led to Butz’s booting. The NY Times wrote: “he described blacks as … READ MORE >
News > Issues
Pope Benedict: Pius XII ‘spared no effort’ to help Jews during WWII
A symposium held in Rome confirmed the Church's position on Pope Pius XII: "'Thanks to the vast quantity of documented material which you have gathered, supported by many authoritative testimonies, your symposium offers to the public forum the possibility of knowing more fully what Pius XII achieved for the Jews persecuted by the Nazi and fascist regimes,'" Benedict said."'One understands, then, that wherever possible he spared no effort in intervening in their favor either directly or through instructions given to other individuals or to institutions of the Catholic Church." READ MORE >
