On an occasion such as this only on the most forsaken would have difficulty expressing immediate and heartfelt thanks to Cardinal Parolin (Secretary of State) who, representing the judgment of the Ratzinger Foundation, has bestowed such an honor on both myself and the extraordinary sculptor, Etsuro Sotoo. Just as it
First, the Babylonians gave the ancient Jews the experience of an apocalypse, and then, after their liberation, the Persians gave them the language with which to understand that apocalypse. For almost two generations during the seventh century BCE, following the Babylonian invasion of the kingdom of Judea and the destruction
On a late-June day, during a very hot summer, without a cell phone and without Google Maps, I got into my stick-shift Toyota Camry and drove across the American South, from Little Rock, Arkansas, to Jacksonville, Florida. I was 18. My friend, Bill, played on a baseball team at a
What on earth, you might be thinking, is a journalist doing talking about poetry? Poets have a great deal to teach journalists about language, but what might a journalist have to say to poets? What I have to say is this: journalists write about life in public, and what they
The prestige of the French intellectual begins at the very moment in which the prestige of the clergy fades. It is a matter of a substitution. It was during the eighteenth century that the power of people who think, those who played no small part in the revolution, started to
Catholic higher education is entering a period of profound change. The pressures are well known: declining enrollments, rising costs, shifting cultural attitudes toward Catholicism, and an increasingly transactional view of education that treats college primarily as job preparation. These forces challenge Catholic colleges and universities to clarify their identity and
If Aquinas’s solution emerges from all of Kant’s problems, in what sense, then, can there be a resurrection of Thomas? Is the only possible characterization of Aquinas one where his philosophy and theology resemble to no small degree the artistic world of his fellow Dominican Fiesole, both of whose clearly
I have the honor of responding to Bishop Boyea’s magnificent reflection on the “spirit of governance.” I love the focus specifically on the “spirit” of governance. Using that phrase drawn from the prayer of episcopal ordination, Bishop Boyea is able to emphasize that the munus regendi, the office of pastoral