Body Politic
Pope and Change
Suddenly, Catholicism is not seen with the same vitriol that it has usually prompted. Francis, the first Jesuit to serve as the Holy Father, took as his namesake Saint Francis of Assisi, the ascetic who adopted a life of poverty and penitence in accordance with Jesus’ message. As much as the life of the original Francis might be obscured in hagiographies, the current Francis’ zealous commitment to asceticism is apparent to us all.
Irate over Iran
But hypocrisy in international relations is a field as fertile as any Afghan pomegranate orchard (with just as many land mines).
The Cohen Conundrum and Racism
Yet the Supreme Court invalidated “separate but equal” public education fewer than 60 years ago—and many years were spent beating back the Southern massive resistance movement before anything approaching racial integration materialized. Prohibitions of interracial marriage were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the 1967 case Loving v. Virginia—fewer than 50 years ago.
