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No Common Ground to be Found

In an interview with U.S. News and World Report , Deal Hudson, the director of Catholic outreach for George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, explains why he thinks Obama’s language about “common ground” is disingenuous but effective. Dan Gilgoff: The Obama . . . . Continue Reading »

The Restoration of Order

Language symbols convey the existence, in the experienced world, of a sense perception that is purposefully designed to reconstitute, for the listener, an “engendering reality.” The truth of these symbols, even if they explicate a non-existent reality, belongs to the non-existent . . . . Continue Reading »

The Truths We Hold

You’ve all read What Truths We Hold , haven’t you? An important piece by Fr. Bernard J. Coughlin, S.J., the former president and current chancellor of Gonzaga University in Spokane: The president says: “We must find a way to live together.” All the while, the infant in the . . . . Continue Reading »

So You Think You Don’t Like Dance?

No one thought it would succeed. Even the executive producer doubted that an “American Idol-style competition for dancers” would work on television. Dance may be, as German musicologist Curt Sachs claimed, the “mother of the arts” but it has always been considered a highbrow form with . . . . Continue Reading »

What do converts want?

I have very slightly paraphrased—left out a “the”—an essay by Terry Mattingly on the sometimes tense relationship between ethnic Orthodox (Eastern Orthodox Christian) and converts (mostly from evangelical and mainstream Protestant churches). The tendrils of the story are long . . . . Continue Reading »

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