2009-12-04
Date:
Friday, December 4, 2009
Re-oriented
Much is being made of rumors that the Vatican will soon issue a decree mandating that the priest celebrate the Mass ad orientem (“toward the East” and, presumably,...
Christmas Critics
Matthew BoudwayThe poets Samuel Menashe, Jack Gilbert, and W. S. Merwin are now all in their eighties. Their reputations secure, their voices assured, they are free...
Building Characters
I think it was The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) that made me vow never again to see anything made by the Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel. Though their first feature, Blood...
Maximus’s Mary
Could the Mother of Jesus have had a greater role in the mission, Passion, and Resurrection of her son than the evangelists tell us? Could women have been important...
The Public Option
Is converting Catholic schools into charter schools better than letting them close? In a growing number of dioceses, that’s precisely the step bishops are taking....
Parish Councils
I’m not sure exactly when I began dreading parish-council meetings, those monthly assemblies of parish staff, elected parishioners, and sundry officeholders. It...
The End of Homelessness?
The good news: Sacramento is ending homelessness! Not so good: They’re accomplishing this mission the same way George W. Bush “ended” the war in Iraq, with a media...
85th Anniversary Party
Three hundred gregarious, generous, and astonishingly attractive people gathered at Pier Sixty in Manhattan on the night of October 19 to celebrate the eighty-fifth...
Terrorists on Trial
How should “enemy combatants” captured and imprisoned by the United States in the so-called war on terror be brought to justice? Should they be prosecuted before...
The independent Catholic press, health-care reform
Slave or free?It’s clear that John Wilkins holds the independent Catholic press in high regard (“The Tightrope,” November 6). The word “independent” appears in his...
