Sightings Articles
A Season of Myths
“Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.” -Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (Götzendämmerung) This past week people in the USA entered the “season of myths” that runs from Thanksgiving through various religious holi...
November 26, 2018
Mute Religion
The title “Sightings” might lead readers to imagine that these columns are solely interested in visual appearances of religions, say, placards at protests, in the cinema or theater, and so forth. But today we ponder the auditory “appearance” of relig...
October 22, 2018
Renaming the Whirlwind
Hurricane Florence and Typhoon Mangkhut, and last year’s Hurricane Maria, not only left devastation and death in their wakes, but also provoked religious questions. They have certainly exposed the moral fiber of a culture, sometimes to its shame. ...
September 24, 2018
Mind-Forged Manacles
Professor Rachel Fulton Brown’s February 16th Sightings piece was about freedom of speech, the place of Christianity in Western culture supposedly championed by Milo Yiannopoulos, and the seeming inability of students to make normative judgments. Whi...
March 2, 2017
The Ethics of Brexit?
The vote by the people of Great Britain to leave the European Union (EU)—the so-called “Brexit”—had immediate, profound, and troubling results. The UK is in tatters despite the plea of politicians for everyone to “Keep Calm and Carry On.” Not only di...
June 30, 2016
Missing From Conversations About San Bernardino Attack—The Main Point: Education!
Amid the shrieks and din of presidential candidates like Donald Trump calling for a moratorium on the immigration of Muslim to our shores, ISIS’ ranting about apocalyptic warfare between Islam and non-Muslims in the West, and President Obama assuring...
December 10, 2015
The Bedrock of Civil Society? Mercy in the Face of Death
Death stalks the schools, cinemas, and churches of America. Not a day passes without some report of a madman killing innocent people and then turning his weapon on himself or cowardly fleeing the scene of the suffering he has sown. Most of the time, ...
July 9, 2015
How's the Weather in Rome?
The world is abuzz with the release of the new Papal Encyclical on the Environment “Laudato Si.”...
July 2, 2015
Preach It, Putin! -- William Schweiker
As readers of Sightings know, these columns often bring to light expressions of religion hidden in public life as it engages current events. But sometimes truths are concealed even in religion’s appearance. Consider Syria: the use of chemical we...
September 19, 2013
Lent and the Sexual Abuse Scandal by Wiliam Schweiker
Sad and troubling news is spreading like wildfire around the world of the extent of the sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church and the seeming failure of the Church leadership, possibly including the Pope, adequately to address the problem. ...