While many Americans are skeptical of the claims of the self-help industry, their attitude can be summed up as follows: "OK, we all know this is a silly and sometimes expensive exercise in navel-gazing. But really, where's the harm?"
Artists are almost by definition exceptional communicators. So some of them have been very successful at pitching themselves as shamans and oracles, as splendid almost unearthly beings, radiant with truth and insight.
All individuals and institutions are, to some degree, marked by inconsistency. Not all of our ducks -- conceptual and behavioral -- are ever quite in a row. But sometimes, an inconsistency is so sharp, so jarring, that it crosses the line into hypocrisy.
There is something Pavlovian about the modern mass media when they deal with any of the various extreme moments of a hyper-celebrity's life.
America's news media have enormous opinion-shaping power. Therefore it's vital for Catholics to understand how the media work, and especially how they work on us.
How should Catholics think about Iran? And how should a Catholic think about Iran?
In a Q&A billed as an interview on his own website, Brown writes My goal is always to make the characters [sic] and plot be so engaging that readers dont realize how much they are learning along the way. Or how much misinformation theyre absorbing.
Despite every attempt to stir controversy and fan fires of moral outrage, Ron Howards film adaptation of Dan Browns novel Angels and Demons enjoyed a peaceful world premiere May 4.
Pope Benedict XVI's visit yesterday to Yad Vashem, Israel's main Holocaust memorial, had been billed coming into this trip as a make-or-break moment, a key test of whether the pontiff could mend fences with Jews after several recent setbacks.