Washington: Just when you’re feeling proud of America, she finds a way to break your heart. At the end of June, it looked like the US was about to pass a remarkable milestone in its fight against the coronavirus. After plummeting for months, the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases appeared poised to drop below Read more
Remember the game of chicken? It’s a foolishly high-stakes challenge in which two drivers risking death, drive on a collision course towards each other until one of the drivers chooses to swerve away. Since neither driver wants to be called “chicken,” meaning coward, they both push the decision to swerve away to the last possible Read more
One of the happiest days in my life was the day in 1999 when I became an American citizen. Born in Italy while my Syrian father, then a medical student, was doing his residency there, I had later met and married a Syrian-American U.S. citizen, Rashid Jijakli, the father of my three American-born children. Three Read more
“Five years ago, I would have been afraid of saying anything like what the pope said in his [recent] interview,” says the Rev. Tom Reese. “I’m ecstatic. I haven’t been this hopeful about the church in decades.” Father Reese had good reason to be afraid. One of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s last acts before becoming Pope Benedict Read more
A “grey pragmatism and mediocrity” has infiltrated Christianity in America, according to an official of the Vatican’s Latin America commission. Professor Guzman Carriquiry, secretary for the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, said there is a growing tendency for Americans’ faith to be lived with a lack of enthusiasm, lukewarmness and ignorance. “How many Christians today Read more
Like the rest of the country, I was horrified to hear of the massacre at the midnight screening of the new Batman film. I’ve witnessed gun violence firsthand from a very early age. All my life, I’ve seen families mourning the way that the families in Colorado are now mourning. I wish there was something Read more
According to The Washington Post and The New York Times the Iraq War has ended—again. But we still have not come to terms with what it has really meant. Those with long memories remember that the first George Bush Gulf War ended as we slaughtered the helpless remnants of the Iraqi army fleeing from Kuwait, Read more
Newt Gingrich sat beneath the soaring dome in the largest Roman Catholic church in North America, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, and listened as a choir that included his wife sang at an evening vespers service for Pope Benedict XVI and 300 American bishops.
That is the moment, three years ago, that Mr. Gingrich says he decided to become a Roman Catholic, after having been born a Lutheran and joining the Southern Baptist Church in college. In 2009, Mr. Gingrich was baptized in the same Catholic parish church on Capitol Hill where Senator Robert F. Kennedy once attended noonday Mass and sometimes assisted the priest as an altar server.
But Mr. Gingrich represents a new kind of Catholic, one very different from the Kennedys, who were Democrats, political liberals and cradle Catholics shaped by the Irish immigrant church.
Read the article...The fact that the number of Americans getting married is at a record low is due to changes in society’s values, public policy decisions and economic factors, says sociologist Dr. W. Bradford Wilcox.
He was responding to a Dec. 14 Pew Research analysis that indicates marriage rates in the U.S. are at a record low, as young couples are delaying marriage longer than ever before.
According to Pew Research Center’s analysis of U.S. Census data, only 51 percent of adults in the U.S. are currently married, compared to 72 percent in 1960. In addition, new marriages in America dropped by five percent between 2009 and 2010.
While the decline in marriage is taking place among all age groups, it is most drastic among young adults. The analysis observed that only 20 percent of adults between the ages of 18 and 29 are married, a drop from 59 percent in 1960.
Part of the decrease in currently married individuals may be tied to young adults delaying marriage, the report said. Both men and women are about six years older when they enter into their first marriage than couples 50 years ago were.
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US Secretary of State, Hiliary Clinton is urging the world to stop discrimination against gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender people, and announced that the US would use diplomatic channels and foreign aid to expand the rights of GLBT people.. “Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights,” said in a speech marking Read more