Naples, Florida and Aberdeen, Scotland are a long way apart geographically if you are speaking in these cities on consecutive weekends. Yet they can be theologically close, as my two recent conferences demonstrated, since they were both focused on the…
My eldest daughter has just married a Sikh at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. I am rejoicing in the happiness of the newlyweds and have visited them at their matrimonial home in the foothills of the Himalayas. I enjoy the…
It is received Washington wisdom that nothing great was ever created by a committee. But the rule has one stunning exception — the King James Bible, which celebrates its 400th anniversary this year, with no end to its spiritual longevity…
Americans are grateful people. More so than in any other country I can think of, the giving and saying of thanks is a vital ingredient in the history, heritage, culture, and day-to-day life of the United States. Why? Visiting various…
When a respected conservative magazine becomes an anti-war magazine its readers and writers should sit up, take notice, and examine their consciences. That was the reaction of your High Spirits columnist to the coruscating editorial attacking “Obama’s War” (TAS, October…
A papal journey, even to the most secular of countries, sure gets people talking, thinking, and arguing about religion. My on-the-spot research for this column began in Scotland on the day Benedict XVI arrived for the first state visit of…
Conrad Black is free. As the old hymn puts it: The prisoner leaps to lose his chains. Hallelujah! Such sentiments, if not in hymn-singing form, will surely be widely shared among TAS readers. But while the mills of U.S. justice…
Cardinal John Henry Newman(1801-1890) was at the center of many controversies and calumnies during his life. He is back in the headlines again, 120 years after his death, because his beatification — as the focal point of Benedict XVI’s papal…
It is an extraordinary experience to go back to a scene of your childhood and to understand from rekindled memories where and how the first seeds of your faith were planted. I recently had this experience, courtesy of the BBC,…