Tough Times Are When Gratitude Counts Most
By Colleen Carroll Campbell
Posted: Sunday November 30, 2008
Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust, once said, "No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night." Few, if any, of us ever will experience the sort of horrifying night that Wiesel endured. But our current atmosphere of job losses, home foreclosures and liquidation of life savings has left us with a pervasive sense of fear.  [Read More]

Adult Interreligious Dialogue
By George Weigel
Posted: Sunday November 30, 2008
Father Christian Troll, a German Jesuit, is one of the Catholic Church's leading students of Islam and a key figure in the Catholic-Islamic dialogue launched by Pope Benedict XVI's September 2006 Regensburg Lecture. Speaking recently at Cambridge University, Father Troll laid out a series of questions that must be faced in any serious conversation between Catholics and Muslims  [Read More]

Troubled American Teen Girls Mar Women's Progress
By Colleen Carroll Campbell
Posted: Friday November 21, 2008
As headlines about shattered ceilings have become ubiquitous, so have reports about the dangerous and self-destructive tendencies of the next generation of women. It seems that while American women are making great strides in public life, our daughters are enduring agonizing struggles in private.  [Read More]

The Two Americas
By George Weigel
Posted: Friday November 21, 2008
By the dawn's early light on Nov. 5, two distinct Americas hove into view. The two Americas are not defined by conventional economic, ethnic or religious categories. No, what this year's election cycle clarified decisively is that the great public fissure in these United States is between the culture of life and the culture of death.  [Read More]

Obama Victory
No mandate for cultural revolution
By Colleen Carroll Campbell
Posted: Friday November 14, 2008
It is often said that America is a center-right country when it comes to social issues. But after Sen. Barack Obama's impressive electoral victory, some pundits say we are witnessing a "lurch to the left" on such issues as abortion, gay marriage and judicial activism.  [Read More]

The Christian Story and the World's Story
By George Weigel
Posted: Thursday November 13, 2008
It is no easy business, getting two millennia of Christian history into 283 readable pages. But Professor Robert Bruce Mullin in A Short World History of Christianity has done the job, in a readable style that makes the fruits of his impressive ample scholarship available to a general audience.  [Read More]

Praying for Those to Be Elected
By George Weigel
Posted: Friday October 31, 2008
With the end of this interminable electoral cycle in sight, let me suggest that it's time to pray: to pray for the candidates, because whoever is inaugurated on January 20, 2009, is facing a world of trouble; to pray for ourselves, that we refrain from tribal voting and make wise and prudent choices; and to pray for our country, that we grow up a bit more in the years ahead.  [Read More]

Obama's Soak-the-Rich Rhetoric Requires Scrutiny
By Colleen Carroll Campbell
Posted: Friday October 31, 2008
Obama's campaign has managed to dodge tough questions about his economic philosophy. Those questions increasingly dog undecided voters and supporters who warmed early to Obama's helping-hand refrains but now wonder how much his handouts will cost them.  [Read More]

CAMPAIGN 2008: Electing Our King
By George Weigel
Posted: Thursday October 30, 2008
For the first century and a half of our national life, the balance of power and influence shifted between president and Congress; the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War brought us to what now seems the final resolution of the argument. Alexander Hamilton and his Federalists won.  [Read More]

Obama and Abortion
The truth lies in his record.
By Colleen Carroll Campbell
Posted: Friday October 24, 2008
Among Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's many political talents is his ability to recalibrate his message to the tastes of different audiences. This gift for niche-messaging sometimes gets him into trouble but it also allows Obama to position himself as a candidate who transcends divisions despite a rigidly partisan record. Nowhere is Obama's skill at squaring contradictions more evident than on abortion.  [Read More]