Soon, probably next week, Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy will sign into a law a bill that abolishes the death penalty in his state. When he does, Connecticut will be the fifth state to enact such legislation in as many years — and the third with a governor who was raised Roman Catholic. As a younger man, […]
Catholic activists pushing politicians to turn tide against the death penalty Read More »
During Shabbat services at my temple last weekend, in an effort to get the kids excited for Passover, the prayer leaders asked the children which part of the Exodus story they liked the best. Many said, “The parting of the Red Sea!” Some said, “When Miriam dances and sings on the opposite shore!” A tiny
Good Friday’s big question: Is doubt good? Read More »
At first, the nationwide ‘‘hoodie’’ protest over Trayvon Martin’s death — in which Americans donned sweatshirts in solidarity with the slain teenager and his family — felt shallow and reflexive, a consumerist reaction. What’s this? I wondered. Is Abercrombie & Fitch now in the business of underwriting our moral outrage? Then I saw Bobby Rush’s performance Wednesday on
Trayvon Martin: Doing justice, having faith in social media Read More »
He has seven children, attends a Latin Mass and has driven issues of reproductive rights back into the center of American politics. In 2002, he traveled to Rome to express his support for the founder of the ultra-conservative Catholic lay movement called Opus Dei. With these boxes on his religious resume checked, Rick Santorum has convinced
Rick Santorum, cafeteria Catholic? Read More »
How America learned to stop worrying about worrying and pop its pills instead. Last summer, near the end of my mother’s life, I woke up in my childhood bedroom in the middle of the night in a fever of panic. My heart was thrumming, my mind racing. In 1819, the English poet John Keats called
New York Mag Cover Story: Listening to Xanax Read More »
It’s impossible for some of us to understand why and how former senator Rick Santorum, who has zero qualifications to be president of the United States and whose positions on family and social issues are prehistoric, continues to survive and even thrive this Republican primary season. His victories in Alabama and Mississippi this week only further our astonishment.
Rick Santorum’s religious time machine Read More »
I am sometimes aghast at how much money I spent on my wedding dress. Four figures, more than I’d ever spent on any item of clothing before or since — enough, ten years on and one kid in, to cover one monthly mortgage payment, a family vacation to Cancun, six weeks of summer day camp,
Marriage is Now a Luxury Good Read More »
The battle of the sexes, waged this election season with fulsome fury in the public space, is being fought in a much more painful, private sphere as well. In churches (and synagogues and mosques) across the land, women are still treated as second-class citizens. And because women of faith are increasingly breadwinners, single moms and
Feminism’s final frontier? Religion. Read More »