Analysis

The stakes are high when it comes to homosexuality, promiscuity, alcoholism, violence, and the like. Previously seen as a result of environmental influence and moral choice, they have now become a genetical given.

We live in a world increasingly dominated by mergers and corporate consolidation.

“Mister Watson, come here, I want to see you.” With this message, Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson, launched the telephone. The door had opened to distant, personal and instant contact.

I was a sickly child. If I wasn’t catching a humble cold, it was something more exotic, like whooping cough or bronchitis.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, a former US president, had a heart attack at the age of 64. Later, despite his cholesterol levels being within the normal range, he adopted a low-fat diet. However, despite the diet, he gained weight and his cholesterol levels rose, calling the effectiveness of the diet into question.

Most of us want to trust. We assume that others possess our own level of honesty and goodwill. Sadly, this is neither a sensible nor a safe attitude anymore.

As intimidating as the Bible may sometimes be, especially because of its size and its sometimes difficult passages, many who have read it from cover to cover say that it has changed their lives for the better—the spiritual resources the whole Bible can provide are not found elsewhere.

The holidays are a time of generosity, when those forgotten by the world meet those who want to forget that sadness exists and, out of the coexistence of the two needs, something good is born.

“And Who Is My Neighbour?” asked a Jewish teacher of the Law when Jesus Christ told him that eternal life entails observing two commandments: to love God and to love one’s neighbour.

Founded on the separation of political and religious authority and shaped by the presumed liberating power of reason, contemporary society is driven by faith in progress as a substitute for faith in God. At the heart of this secularized world, a pressing question emerges: what role does the Church still play today?

I love books as much as I love people, but if I’m honest with myself, sometimes I find a little more comfort in the company of books than in the presence of my fellow humans.

This year, Yom Hashoah,[1] or Holocaust Remembrance Day, begins on the evening of April 27th, and ends on April 28th, at sunset. In Israel, entertainment venues are closed from sunset to sunset, sirens sound long, and the six traditional torches are lit, a symbol of the nearly 6 million people who perished in the atrocities of World War II.

I have always been fascinated by God. And yet, I believe I could have known Him far better—much more deeply—if only I had better understood what He sought to teach me each day, including through my neighbour.

In a world of many predetermined things, friends are the family we choose for ourselves. Often, their presence is what keeps us going. In Vital Friends, Tom Rath says that many of those who end up on the streets, divorced, or addicted to overeating, struggle with inner demons precisely because they are alone. They feel excluded, abandoned, unloved.

Did you wrestle with your decision to have children? Or did you know motherhood was for you from a long time back? More than six years ago, I found myself wondering about children. I couldn’t really find a “point” to having children. “Underpinning all of these [ideas] was the knowledge that the world is overpopulated and under-resourced,” I had written.