Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper In many ways, the second half of the 20th century was a high point for Jewish-Christian relations. Today, however, the anti-Israel politics of certain powerful Christian bodies hampers interfaith relations and threatens to breathe new life into medieval doctrine that demonized Jews for hundreds of years. http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748703572404575634813393141110-lMyQjAxMTAwMDAwMzEwNDMyWj.html Read more

George Weigel The Europe of the 21st century needs something more than the allure of the welfare state to sustain itself – not least because that welfare state is about to crash into a fiscal wall. One may doubt, however, whether the “Gods of Olympus” will fill contemporary Europe’s transcendence gap. Those interested in resolving that dilemma are more likely to find creative and historically nuanced answers in Rome than in Brussels, and from a Bavarian theologian rather than a... Read more

As a critique of culture, and as an expression of the gulf between the modern West’s understanding of sexuality and the traditional Christian approach to love and sex and marriage, the Church’s brief against artificial birth control looks, if anything, much more compelling today than it did when Pope Paul VI reaffirmed it in the famous/infamous 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae. http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/condoms-catholicism-and-casuistry/?nl=opinion&emc=tyb1 Read more

David Hall Getting the Puritans right won’t change what we eat on Thanksgiving, but it might change what we can be thankful for and how we imagine a better America. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/opinion/24hall.html?nl=opinion&emc=tya1 Read more

George Weigel reports: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/253679/deflating-nyt-condom-scoop-george-weigel Read more

Yesterday the wrong link appeared under this title. here is the correct link: http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/11/something-israel-cannot-do Read more

No Israeli government would, or could, accept a return to the 1967 line, which would would make Israel indefensible. The Palestinian negotiating position always has been to force Israel to accept a settlement that would undermine its capacity to defend itself. Israel will not and should not accept a putative peace deal that would leave Palestinian territory just eleven miles from the Mediterranean Sea and put Hamas rocketeers atop hilltops a dozen miles from Tel Aviv and even closer to... Read more

Calls issued by rabbis not to rent apartments to Arabs, including such an appeal delivered recently by the chief rabbi of Safed, belie Israel’s definition as a Jewish state. They contradict the state’s Jewish character no less (and, perhaps, more) than they undermine its definition as democratic. Much has already been said about the ease with which we allow ourselves to assail the country’s minorities, as though we do not bear a heritage of abuse as a persecuted minority in... Read more

In a recent short essay in America, the once influential magazine put out by the Society of Jesus. Fr. Raymond A. Schroth, S.J., offers what he thinks is a lasting answer to the conflict between Jews and Palestinians over the future of the Holy Land. Unfortunately, as he faces this thorny issue, which calls for the delicate exercise of theological reflection and prudential judgment, he offers easy Leftist slogans rather than serious analysis. http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/11/bad-dreams Read more

You’ve never heard of me, but there’s a good chance that you’ve read some of my work. I’m a hired gun, a doctor of everything, an academic mercenary. My customers are your students. I promise you that. Somebody in your classroom uses a service that you can’t detect, that you can’t defend against, that you may not even know exists. http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/ Read more