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Columns

What has passed is not always what was best

Your memories will try to trick you. I thought about that as I was driving down a street near my house the other day, when I spotted a father walking down the sidewalk, his young daughter slung over his shoulder like a sack of coal he was hauling out of a mine. Her hair bounced along on his ...

Trump, the pope and the gospel of ‘Pulp Fiction’

It is hardly surprising that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's explicitly Christian monthly worship services monthly in the Pentagon have raised alarm in some quarters about the separation of church and state. But who expected to find him quoting lines of alleged scripture that were lifted ...

How Hungary matters

What's the big deal about Hungary? It's a central European country with 9.5 million people -- slightly less in population and area than the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. But it's been the subject of more care, attention and debate in America than any other country in Europe or the Western ...

American heresy

"The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. ... They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone — the most ...

The president and the pope

Call him the "antisocial" media president. When a president attacks the Pope, he telegraphs: "There's nothing I won't do or say." That is a profoundly troubling message. There are no lines I won't cross, no rules I won't break, President Donald Trump is telling the whole wide world. ...

Trump vs. the Pope

As far as showdowns between popes and secular leaders go, President Trump versus Pope LEO hardly rates. LEO hasn't forced Trump to come see him and stand for three days in the snow, the way Pope Gregory VII did to Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor, in 1077. Nor has he issued an interdict, a ...