Search for "cheap airline tickets from tampa to boston phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Nuns on the Bus: 2700 Miles, Nine States, and a Rock Star DC Welcome

By Mary E. Hunt

…bleachers, and eight speakers lined up to address the crowd. The audience numbered about 30. Even Timothy Dolan at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, on the kickoff day of the Fortnight, only gathered 250 people. The nuns got that many in small towns across the country at stop after stop. The bus trip also proved that there is a deep hunger across generations for this kind of faith-based organizing. The crowd in DC was surprisingly younger…

Is ‘Western Self-Hatred’ the Problem in the Gaza War Protest Movement?

By Shaul Magid

…onflict, which is becoming more common. Then there’s a recent piece in The Boston Globe, “Socialism’s at the Core of the Pro-Palestinian Movements’ Next Phase on College Campuses.” The report traces a series of student groups in conversation over the next stage of the protest movement, which they say is largely about “a wider global malaise, the manifestation of capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy they see embedded in Western society.” Is…

Purchasing Morality: What Happens When “Buying Local” Itself is Marketed?

By Laurie Patton

…o…” And here I anticipate a word: enjoy, appreciate, understand, know… any number of verbs will do, but none is the word given. The word is: purchase. As in: “To revive the beauty of Palestinian tradition so it could be available for all to purchase.” Even here, I quickly overcome my own negative response to the phrasing. Of course, I said to myself after a moment, the word should be “purchase,” and not “enjoy” or “appreciate” or even “know.” Beca…

Why Can’t We Take Death Seriously? The Obama Administration’s Latest Retreat

By Peter Laarman

…Medicare rules back in July in order to allow more public comment. But the Boston Globe got it right in a stinging editorial: the truth is that the administration simply caved before the still potent specter of so-called “Death Panels”—a specter created last year by the likes of Sarah Palin, John Boehner, and other disingenuous opponents of health care reform. Let’s just say that in this new year, Team Obama is worried to death (pardon the express…

Francis and the Nuns: An Interview with Mary Gordon

By Patricia Miller

…get from the right. You see this all the time with Catholic colleges like Boston College. Wealthy alumna will make a fuss about something they don’t like and they will pull back. As you note, there are limits on what Francis can do, and animosity between nuns and the hierarchy over questions of authority has a long history in the church. What is the one thing you think Francis could do to show that he is serious about reform and a new attitude wh…

The Ghost Is More Important Than The Machine: Norman Corwin (1910-2011)

By Peter Manseau

…spell conjuring the sensation of what a “miracle” it truly was: “This microphone is not an ordinary instrument / For it looks out on vistas wide indeed,” he wrote. “My voice commingles now with northern lights and asteroids and Alexander’s skeleton / With dead volcanoes and with donkey’s ears… / It drifts among whatever spirits pass across the night.” Corwin was the first radio scribe who wrote with full awareness of what this new medium meant and…

Peru’s Civil Unions Bill Killed as Bishop Calls Sponsor ‘Faggot’; Germany Fines Men For Trying To Force Gay Muslim Teen Into Hetero Marriage; LGBT Global Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…Grand Rabbi Mayer Alter Horowite, the leader of the Har Nof branch of the Boston Hasidic dynasty, held a press conference at his home in Jerusalem: The Rebbe ruled that haredim must not vote for the Bayit Yehudi party due to its part in the IDF draft law, which imposes criminal sanctions on certain yeshiva students who don’t serve in the army, and because it is in favor of granting civil rights to same-sex couples. “There is a community which wan…

‘Empty the Pews’ Chronicles the ‘Nurtured Insanity’ of a Fundamentalist Upbringing

By Frank Schaeffer

…Schaeffers were busy littering train seats, café tables, and assorted telephone booths all over Europe with luridly illustrated little pamphlets “in the local language, in case someone is led to read it,” as Dad said. They had titles such as “What Must I Do to Be Saved?” and “Is There a Heaven and Hell?” and “Where Will I Spend Eternity?” Sometimes, as our train roared through Italian or Swiss towns, Dad would fling handfuls of tracts from the wi…

Netanyahu Patriarch Dies at 102, Leaves Hawkish Legacy

By Shalom Goldman

…period when the two ambitious young businessmen were working for the same Boston consulting firm in the 1970s. The elder Netanyahu’s death has given Romney yet another opportunity to position himself as ‘pro-Israel’—or in his words, a champion of “all who care about Israel.” The implication, of course, is that Obama, and liberals in general, do not care about the Jewish state. This most recent opportunity to praise Israel’s right-wing leadership…

No to Church, Yes to Jesus?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…“I think of Jesus first and foremost as a healer,” a secular humanist from Boston who had been educated by Jesuits in Brazil told me. “He’s such an icon for reaching out to people most in need. That didn’t end up making me believe in a supernatural being who gives out miracle cures,” he made clear, “but it’s a big social lesson. It’s really the best side of Christianity.” Indeed, so compelling is this understanding of Jesus to many Nones that in c…