No time or society, I imagine, is entirely without its ironies or contradictions. 

In the winter months, it would be salutary for people young and old to put down their iPods and other electronic devices and tell each other stories. 

Re-reading the last volume of Parkman's massive work, France and England in North America, I was struck by his keen insight into the future.

In 1988 as Pope John Paul II began his speech to the European Parliament, Ian Paisley, a member for Northern Ireland, shouted that the pope was the Antichrist. 

In Independence Hall is preserved a chair crafted in 1779 by the cabinetmaker John Folwell, with a sun on the horizon carved at the top. 

Cardinal Robert Sarah is one of the adornments of the Catholic Church, although it's very unlikely that this man of faith, humor, intelligence, and profound humility would appreciate my putting it that way.

You don't have to be Catholic to be fully sane, but it helps.

People are, clearly, desperate to change by whatever means they find available.

My work has caused me to become perhaps unhealthily preoccupied with the problem of evil.  Why do people commit evil?  What conditions allow it to flourish?  How is it best prevented and, when necessary, suppressed?

For most of the Christian ages, there were no pews, or much seating of any sort.