Occurring during the inter-war period, those twenty years between the First and Second World Wars, the Spanish Civil War is not as well-known as it should be. For many, Picasso’s famous painting Guernica, commemorating the April 1937...
Listening to others is fast becoming a lost art. The most common sign of this is refusal to listen to views that oppose our own, but recent years have revealed a more serious sign—demanding that others refrain from listening to...
I had a college ring that my parents gave me upon graduation with my PhD. I imagine these days this ring is not worth much but, to me, it is priceless. Getting my doctorate in chemistry was a victory for someone who dropped out of college as an...
Once there was an elderly woman named Mrs. Gunderson who lived in a big house near the edge of town. The house was run down, because she was too weak to take care of it properly; she tried her best to maintain it, but it was more than she could...
The great inventor Thomas Edison was not a religious man, but he had a genuine respect for those who sincerely practiced their faith. For instance, for over sixty years he generously contributed to several orders of religious sisters, especially...
An American missionary priest spent many years in Taiwan helping the poor, and he was very experienced and very good at what he did. When he returned to the United States, he became involved in a different kind of missionary work: a movement in New...
The Pharisees desired to attain self-worth by jockeying for the places of honor at the banquets attended also by Jesus. The Gospel, elsewhere, tells us that they always did that. They coveted the more honorable places as well as respect...
In a recent essay I traced the problem of divisiveness in modern America to our culture’s overemphasis on SELF—notably self-esteem and self-actualization—and suggested that the solution lies in renewed appreciation of the virtue of humility...
