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
Latin Patriarch’s Easter Homily: Security Cannot Be Achieved by Inflicting Insecurity on Others
“For the people and for all our political leaders, the situation has become deadlocked, or still worse, a routine of death that the latter think they must only govern without ever giving it life. The recent events of these past few weeks, Gaza, the murder at the yeshiva in Jerusalem, the young people killed in Bethlehem, and many others, are no more than sterile repetitions of the events of all the past years. And we will not stop repeating that security cannot be achieved by inflicting insecurity on others. New means must be found…” 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
The Wire’s War on the Drug War
"Jury nullification is American dissent, as old and as heralded as the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger, who was acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, and absent a government capable of repairing injustices, it is legitimate protest. If some few episodes of a television entertainment have caused others to reflect on the war zones we have created in our cities and the human beings stranded there, we ask that those people might also consider their conscience. And when the lawyers or the judge or your fellow jurors seek explanation, think for a moment on Bubbles or Bodie or Wallace. And remember that the lives being held in the balance aren't fictional." READ MORE >
News > Issues
Is abortion for sex selection on its way out?
"Two and a half billion people live in China or India. That's eight times the population of the United States and more than one-third of the world's total. But it's less than it would have been by hundreds of millions of people, thanks in part to two brutal practices: a Chinese limit of one child per family and widespread abortions of unborn Indian girls. Those practices may be on the way out..." READ MORE >
News > Issues
The gay marriage slump: Same-sex couples deciding not to get hitched
"It was supposed to be a whole new era, as celebrations accompanied the adoption of civil union and domestic partnership laws in several states. But a funny thing happened on the way to the altar: Gay couples decided they might not want to get married after all... 'For many of us, the idea of getting married sticks in your craw. Why would anyone want to get married? It's almost a visceral reaction.'"
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News > Issues
Battle Company Is Out There
"I went to Afghanistan last fall with a question: Why, with all our technology, were we killing so many civilians in air strikes? As of September of last year, according to Human Rights Watch, NATO was causing alarmingly high numbers of civilian deaths — 350 by the coalition, compared with 438 by the insurgents... To find out, I spent much of the fall in the Korengal Valley and elsewhere in Kunar province alongside soldiers who were making life-and-death decisions almost every day — decisions that led to the deaths of soldiers and of civilians." 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 >
News > Issues
For the Children: David Blankenhorn and Kay S. Hymowitz on marriage
“The material Blankenhorn amasses establishes that far from a private relationship to satisfy adult needs, marriage is a social institution to meet social needs. Against this argument the case for same-sex marriage cannot stand… [A]ccepting same-sex marriage means accepting same-sex parenthood, by whatever means a child is acquired. This will deny the child the very benefit marriage was instituted to confer on him. Blankenhorn characterizes Andrew Sullivan's argument as ‘reeking of narcissism’ and demanding that ‘we worry less about children and more about adults.’" 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
A Liberal Admits that ‘Christianophobia” is a Problem
“In parts of Africa where bandits and warlords shoot or rape anything that moves, you often find that the only groups still operating are Doctors Without Borders and religious aid workers: crazy doctors and crazy Christians. In the town of Rutshuru in war-ravaged Congo, I found starving children, raped widows and shellshocked survivors. And there was a determined Catholic nun from Poland, serenely running a church clinic. Unlike the religious right windbags, she was passionately ‘pro-life’ even for those already born — and brave souls like her are increasingly representative of religious conservatives. We can disagree sharply with their politics, but to mock them underscores our own ignorance and prejudice.” READ MORE >
News > Issues
After Hard-Won Lessons, Army Doctrine Revised
“The American military’s difficulty in securing Iraq has led to much soul-searching within the armed forces on how to prepare for future conflicts… The Army has drafted a new operations manual that elevates the mission of stabilizing war-torn nations, making it equal in importance to defeating adversaries on the battlefield…” READ MORE >
