At South and City College in Birmingham, dozens of young people clad in hi-vis vests and hard hats are building mini-walls and plastering half-formed rooms. Some weave in and out of stacks of bricks with wheelbarrows, while others use spirit levels to check the walls are straight and flat. In a few days time, these…
US President Donald Trump was rushed to safety from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner after gunshots rang out at the venue. The President and First Lady Melania Trump appeared to be part way through a conversation at the Washington Hilton when he was interrupted by a commotion at the White House table. Chief US correspondent…
A Republican-backed proposal in California to create new voter identification requirements and citizenship audits is set to appear on the ballot in November, part of a nationwide G.O.P. push to tighten voting laws. The proposal would require voters to bring identification to the polls and provide an ID number when voting by mail. It would…
Is the tide finally turning on the bigotry, fear-mongering and manufactured division in our society, including on college campuses? The success of a joyful gathering last week at traditionally Baptist Baylor University in Waco, Texas, suggests it might be. This week on The State of Belief, host Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush brings us with…
Sonia Pressmen Fuentes, an early women’s rights lawyer who told the feminist author Betty Friedan that women needed an advocacy group to fight for them the way the N.A.A.C.P. fought for Black Americans, planting the seed for the National Organization for Women, died on Dec. 20 in Sarasota, Fla. She was 97. Her death, which…
As the dust begins to settle following Pope Leo XIV’s April 15-18 visit to Cameroon, church leaders in the Central African nation believe the pontiff’s journey has created a “kairos” moment of grace in a country longing for peace. Arriving in Cameroon, the pope faced a country grappling with Boko Haram violence, regional refugee crises and…
In letters to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and all members of Parliament from the Toronto area, Cardinal Frank Leo asked that they “choose life and not death” and build a civilization that cares when voting on the Right to Recover Act. The measure, Bill C-218, proposes to amend Canada’s criminal code to permanently prohibit…
When I first started teaching at Oxford in 2005, I would offer “office hours” a couple of times a week. They were literally that – time for students to come by my office and chat about anything on their mind. Emails were formal and for rare occasions, with the expectation that most issues would be…
When my father took me to play golf for my 10th birthday at some nine-hole course in the middle of an Indiana cornfield, I looked at him after the round and said, “That was the best day of my life.” Growing up in the basketball-obsessed state of Indiana, I learned early on I’d have to…
The journalistic legacy of longtime National Catholic Reporter contributor Jason Berry has now been preserved by University Press of Mississippi as part of their Literary Conversations series. The new book Conversations with Jason Berry compiles 23 archived interviews in which Berry reflects on the forces that have shaped his work — including uncovering corruption in the Catholic…
