The Ripken Ethic
In Men at Work, George F. Will began his celebration of baseball defense with a tale of Cal and Bill Ripken turning a rally-killing double-play while their father watched from
Chairman Gioia Makes NEA Work
Tradition tells us that baseball is the national pastime. Economics tells us that it’s pro football. Casual conversation makes it clear that the America’s favorite sport is complaining about government.
Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger (1926–2007)
In the early 1950s, or so I’m told, two young men who would later come to world prominence attended some of the same political science lectures at the Sorbonne. One
California Dreamin’, Missin’ the Real Deal
Ah, the summer of 1967. A gangly young Australian priest named George Pell turned up at my Baltimore parish and became a family friend; none of us imagined him the
Martyrdom and the Christian Future in Iraq
In early June, I received a forwarded e-mail from a correspondent who’s done several tours in Iraq. He, in turn, had just heard from an Iraqi fellow-Catholic, a former translator
Christ First, Last and Always
A few weeks back, Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter, and I were invited by Doubleday to help launch Pope Benedict XVI’s new book,
Papa Ratzinger at 80
On April 16, 2005, the staff of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith hosted a small party for the congregation’s prefect, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Cardinal Ratzinger turned 78
Pope Benedict XVI: The Master-Teacher
Joseph Ratzinger came to the Chair of St Peter late in life, a 78-year-old man who could look back (although he rarely, if ever, chose to do so) on decades
Demythologizing Father Drinan
Before the gossamer threads of mythology being woven around the memory of the late Father Robert Drinan, S.J., harden into what some might take for facts, a visit to the
John Paul II
ROME. On the third floor of the Lateran Palace, home of the Vicariate of Rome, is a most remarkable mail-stop. Its official title is non-postal: “The Postulation for the Cause
Meeting Mozart
The Bloomsbury critic, Lytton Strachey, was the father of the modern practice of biography-as-assassination. Writing amidst the cynicism caused by the First World War, Strachey’s Eminent Victorians set the model
The Queen
On a golden alpine summer evening in 1992, I unexpectedly found myself in conversation with Prince Nikolaus von und zu Liechtenstein, younger brother of that micro-principality’s ruler, Prince Hans Adam
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