Search

It is easy to blame the war machine or the pornography industry, but the more mundane problem is with our addiction to visual thrills. What some people see as a lack of moral vision (watching a porn video, for example) is perhaps better approached as an amoral astigmatism, a lazy eye, a privileging of the visual over our other evolved senses. The thrill of watching may mingle with compassion for those being harmed, but unless you as a viewer do something to actually alleviate that suffering, you are only a voyeuristic addict, entranced by the power of the gaze.

I have no desire to set off fireworks, jump into a car and yell out the window while waving fists and flags. If I were in New York City, I would light a candle at the memorial and keep vigil. In San Francisco, I pray in a room lit only by a streetlamp, filled with sadness for those who have died in America, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, and apprehension at the terrorism-related deaths to come. Our work as Americans and Muslims is far from done.

According to Vatican representative Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, ending discrimination against gays, lesbians, and transgender persons would make those who oppose such human rights the real victims.

A new study shows that no matter how strongly a woman’s pastor may rail, a woman will make up her own mind when her pregnancy goes awry or is unplanned. So here’s the common ground: make sure she has the best medical care.

The conflation of Geronimo with bin Laden once again illustrates the failure of the U.S. to consider its own history in fighting insurgent wars.

The assassination of Osama bin Laden has revived the so-called torture debate. Even if it did help in his capture (which it didn’t), torture is still wrong.

The number of those who believe that rape survivors should have to carry a pregnancy to term is rising, though scrutiny of the position reveals it to be cruel and extremist.

Maqbul Fida Husain, known as M.F. Husain, was India’s most famous, and its most infamous, contemporary painter. Often labeled the Picasso of India, his life and work spanned the 20th century and inched into the 21st century.

The 30th wedding anniversary calls for pearls, various websites say. And yet, we have no weddings really, from the federal point of view. So what does the 30th mean? Is it the beginning of the end? The end of the beginning? The eschaton? For some, AIDS/HIV is one of the mythic horsemen of the apocalypse. The Salvation Army writes of the “three horsemen of the Russian Apocalypse—AIDS” Others write of the “hybrid horseman of the apocalypse: the global AIDS pandemic.” We debate whether an HIV-positive diagnosis—or even an AIDS diagnosis—is the end of the world. And we write of “the virus at the end of the world.” The victories seem somehow pyrrhic.

The decision of Episcopal churches like St. Luke’s to convert en masse to Roman Catholicism while retaining a quasi-medieval Anglican liturgy is not, however, a decision to move into this ever-emerging ecclesial reality. It is a solemn retreat into an imagined past where a priest’s sacramental office itself, his back turned to the congregation, protects him from the conflicted desires and diverse stirrings of the wider church.