At Thanksgiving, the secular and religious impulses, usually taken to be antagonists, salute each other respect. Their spheres overlap. The holiday is built around gratitude, which is nothing less than the great human opening to transcendence, however defined. (Page A11, 720 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Nov 23, 2009

Arlington National Cemetery is a beautiful place, as it should be, but its grandeur can deceive. To walk among the markers of those who died in wars is to confront the distance between war's contradictory contingency and the absoluteness of the death of each one killed in war. (Page A11, 709 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Nov 16, 2009

Today is the 20th anniversary of the event that proved the realists wrong. When joyous citizens breached the Berlin Wall with rock music and dancing instead of guns and tanks, the Cold War was over. (Page A11, 728 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Nov 9, 2009

The Vatican's preemptive exploitation of Anglican distress explicitly ducks the large and urgent challenge facing every religion and every religious person, which is how to positively reconcile tradition with the massive changes in awareness, knowledge, and communication that come with the scientific and technological breakthroughs that daily alter the meaning of existence. (Page A11, 723 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Oct 26, 2009

US troop levels in Afghanistan are going up, along with measures of confusion about whom our forces are actually at war with. Our brave soldiers' backpacks are weighed down by, in addition to gear, the stubborn mistakes of those in command. (Page A9, 717 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Oct 19, 2009

Columbus, as every American schoolchild knows, was on the make for gold, spices, commercial routes to "India." All true. But none of that touches what mattered most to the man himself -- which was a spiritual purpose. (Page A11, 725 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Oct 12, 2009

For Jews, the autumn holy days are a time for moral reckoning. This year, Jews and non-Jews who love Israel have special reason for introspection, in light of the just-released United Nations report on the Gaza war of last winter (Page A11, 682 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Sep 21, 2009

Sixteen years after institutionalizing a denigration of gay people, the Pentagon is discovering that its “don’t ask, don’t tell’’ policy has been a moral catastrophe. (Page A11, 726 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Oct 5, 2009

One year after the financial panic was at full bore the US economy is more shackled than ever to a military budget, which is money spent, for all its benefits, on death. Why is the gulf between haves and have-nots still the normal structure of economic order -- or is that what our military budget aims to protect against? (Page A11, 720 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Nov 2, 2009

Labor Day traditionally celebrates pride in work and the solidarity of workers, but this year there is fear instead of pride, lonely anxiety instead of solidarity (Page A11, 709 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Sep 7, 2009

The elephants in the congressional chamber last week were not the scowling Republicans, but Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of which was mentioned. (Page A11, 708 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Sep 14, 2009

That Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld supplied President Bush with Bible-laced Pentagon intelligence briefings should raise a deep and important question: What in heaven (or hell) is going on inside the US military? (Page A11, 715 words)By: James Carroll|Date: May 25, 2009

When hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets at Aquino's funeral last week, t was impossible not to think of the millions who rallied to her during the "People Power Revolution" of 1986. (Page A9, 713 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Aug 10, 2009

In the middle of the 20th century, America blindly lashed our economy, academy, and culture to a nuclear engine that defeats the moral agency of our greatest leaders. (Page A11, 738 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Jul 13, 2009

Tumult in the streets of Iran has made palpable an "inalienable" longing for power that respects persons. (Page A11, 718 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Jun 29, 2009

For most of a century, "the general form of thought" has taken its shape from the East-West division. President Obama has deftly stepped outside this framework. (Page A11, 709 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Jun 15, 2009

It has taken a couple of weeks to get the mind around the revelations of the Irish report on child abuse at schools and orphanages that were run by Catholic orders like the Sisters of Mercy and the Christian Brothers. Yes, the perpetrators should be identified and prosecuted. And yes, the structures of the church that allowed for such clerical betrayal should be changed. But the abuse report requires a broader examination of conscience than that. (Page A11, 720 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Jun 8, 2009

"Trees," by Joyce Kilmer, takes on new meaning when a high school student meets a teacher with a cruel lesson. (Page A11, 712 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Aug 24, 2009

Can the people of this country expect those in power to identify with their situations? (Page A11, 711 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Aug 17, 2009

When it comes to the atomic bombing of Japan, our nation divides between those for whom the question remains abstract and unreckoned with, and those for whom it is intensely personal and settled. (Page A11, 724 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Aug 3, 2009

In the forgotten war, Truman's refusal to order the use of atomic weapons is the forgotten decision. Its impact has been as permanent as it has been under appreciated, for the effect of Truman's rejection of the bomb was to establish a taboo against nuclear use that has lasted all these years. (Page A11, 726 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Jun 1, 2009

For the next two weeks, the days shorten, the nights grow longer, and the eyes of all people lift to see what's coming. (Page A15, 726 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Dec 8, 2008

Every kind of madness can be defined as collapse of boundaries, which may be why this pervasive manifestation of the phenomenon threatens. (Page A11, 714 words)By: James Carroll|Date: May 18, 2009

As the criminal march of Hamas rocket fire continues across the territory of Israel, the rockets' red glare casts a new light on Israel's and the world's dangerous nuclear complacency. (Page A11, 706 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Jan 12, 2009

The "decisive year" for which Gorbachev called two decades ago may now be here -- for our side. (Page A13, 728 words)By: James Carroll|Date: Dec 29, 2008