“The Father of us both”: Fr. Christian’s last testament

19 years ago today, in the Atlas mountains of Algeria, seven Trappist monks where kidnapped from their rural monastery. Eventually murdered along with many thousands of Algerians and foreigners in the mid-1990s, the French monks had decided to stay in their African home despite the country's civil war. The story of these men, and the two …

Why I cried in Arabic class

I don’t know what exactly brought tears to my eyes, but the combination of the beautiful culture and its tragic loss; the foreign sound of bombs and the familiar sound of Shami Arabic; and the human goodness that somehow persists in the midst of evil made a lump rise in my throat. I looked over and noticed that my teacher was fighting back tears, too.

Images from Iraq

Along with its series containing leaked information about the Iraq war, the New York Times published these two slideshows--one depicting civilian deaths and one illustrating detainee abuse by Iraqis (and overlooked by Americans.) If we saw these pictures of war every day on the news, I think wars would be much less frequent.  The carnage …