Rome should switch from Latin to English, Thomas G. Casey, SJ, argues in this America essay, “Ave atque Vale.” Casey, an Irish Jesuit and professor of philosophy at the Gregorian University in Rome, notes that Italian is understandably the Vatican argot, but Latin is its official language–despite the fact that fewer and fewer church officials can speak or…

Watching history unfold is one of the great benefits of modern media. The Daily Dish has wall-to-wall updates, including links to neocons apparently pleased with Ahmadinejad’s “victory”–spare no effort to confirm one’s bias. The NYT is here with the latest on supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei‘s acquiesence to a “high-level inquiry” into alleged voting irregularities. What is happening? Party…

The New York Times reports on apparent evidence of sex selection among Asian immigrants, a cultural holdover from their home countries: The trend is buried deep in United States census data: seemingly minute deviations in the proportion of boys and girls born to Americans of Chinese, Indian and Korean descent. In those families, if the…

Q: How many people work at the Vatican? A: About half of them. Ba-da-boom! Only that rimshot was reportedly delivered by Pope John XXIII himself. Though I’ve never found the citation, it is–as we say at the tabloids–too good to check out. And it sounds like Pope John. It also sounds like the Vatican I…

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