Related Articles: Dangling Conversations
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The Revolution in Germany
8/28/2009 12:00:00 AMAngela Merkel's first term as German chancellor was one of the most lackluster stretches of German politics in recent memory. Unlike past heavyweights such as Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt, and Helmut Kohl, as chancellor, the ultracautious, pragmatic Merkel has failed to make any sort of lasting mark on the republic. Yet at the same time, she has quietly presided over a veritable revolution in her own party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and in doing so she has transformed German conservatism beyond recognition. This fact is something that Merkel would never advertise. But it helps explain why, despite her unimpressive record, she has remained immensely popular, with an approval rating of 61 percent—and it is the reason the Christian Democrats will most probably walk away with the election in September and deliver Merkel a second term.
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The Believer
8/27/2009 12:00:00 AMAs little children, they went to mass each week, and every day in the summertime. "We always had a rosary on our beds; and then, of course, [Mother would] hear our bedtime prayers and do our catechism with us," said Patricia, the sixth of Joseph and Rose Kennedy's nine children, in her mother's memoir, Times to Remember. They thanked God for the food on their table, and at Sunday dinner they discussed the sermon they'd heard that morning. Priests and nuns were regular guests at meals—and house-guests, too—in Hyannis, as caught up in the sailing and tennis as the children themselves. The Kennedys were sons and daughters of privilege; their milestones—baptisms, weddings, too many funerals—were marked in church by America's highest bishops. Teddy, the baby, received his first holy communion from Pope Pius XII in Rome, telling reporters afterward, "He patted my head and told me I was a smart little fellow." Archbishop (soon to be Cardinal) Richard Cushing performed Jack's wedding. That prelate, with his broad Boston-Irish accent, presided over Jack's funeral and helped with Bobby's, too. He barely kept his composure at the first; he wept openly at the second.
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On Deck
7/22/2009 12:00:00 AMWhen Pope Benedict XVI broke his wrist in the middle of the night last week, the world was reminded rather suddenly of his age (82), his potential frailty, and the possibility that, some time in the not too distant future, the Roman Catholic Church could be looking once again to choose a new Successor of Peter.
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God Bless This Gadget
7/18/2009 12:00:00 AMIf you had to choose one weapon for fighting the next religious war, you could do worse than to pick an iPhone. In recent months, the foot soldiers of religion have come out with a bevy of new programs designed to win converts and make religious practices more accessible. For those of the Jewish faith, iBlessing helps in figuring out which blessings go with which food, ParveOMeter keeps track of the waiting times between eating meat and dairy, and Siddur gives prayer times based on one's GPS coordinates. Devout Roman Catholics will appreciate iBreviary, which pulls up and displays complete missal and principal prayers in Spanish, French, English, Latin, and Italian.
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Is the Economic Crisis a Sin?
7/10/2009 12:00:00 AMOne issue on which President Obama and Pope Benedict XVI agree is that people of faith are supposed to stand for economic justice. This idea is as old as the biblical command to "let justice roll down like a river, and righteousness an ever-flowing stream" (Amos 5:24).
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Without a Doubt
7/9/2009 12:00:00 AMTomorrow Pope Benedict XVI and President Barack Obama meet for the first time, an affair much anticipated and in some circles frowned upon by American Catholics in the wake of Obama's controversial Notre Dame commencement speech in May. Conservatives in the church denounced Obama's appearance as a nod by the premier Catholic university to a conciliatory politics that heralds the start of a slippery moral slope.
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