Conventional wisdom holds that Halloween is essentially a secular and pagan holiday, the result of the Christian Church appropriating an ancient Celtic harvest festival. But one strain of critical opinion tends to the view that the holiday was thoroughly Christian from the start. In the church calendar, Halloween (All Hallows’ Eve) is the beginning of
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Last Tuesday marked the 25th anniversary of the United Nations’ International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. The date intentionally coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Call to Action, which saw the French anti-poverty campaigner Father Joseph Wresinski ask the international community, in front of 100,000 Parisians, to “strive to eradicate extreme poverty”. To mark
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It’s no secret that marriage rates are declining. Recent data from Pew shows that between 1960 and 2016, marriage rates for those 18 and older fell from 72 percent to 50 percent. There are many theories on why this is. The rise of cohabitation and the fear of divorce. The increase in education attainment. The
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Advice on how to improve schools is a dime a dozen. Teach math earlier. Start the school day later. Read more books. School year round. And the list goes on. All these suggestions are worth a try and may prove to be quite helpful. But do they treat the symptoms rather than one of the
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President Barack Obama’s Justice Department created a “slush fund” of nearly $1 billion using legal settlements with banks and steered those funds to political allies on the left while excluding conservative groups, internal documents show. Tony West, an associate attorney general during the Obama administration who is now a top official at PepsiCo Inc., figures
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It is almost fifty years since the “Spanish Inquisition” sketch by Monty Python’s Flying Circus was first aired on British television. Today its catchphrase, “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” has an enshrined place in popular culture. It is, however, ironic that the well-known catchphrase contradicts the grim reality of life in our increasingly secular culture.
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