WHERE IS « MY » HOME?
I am writing this note as I am self-quarantined in “my” home. I am learning that it is not “my” home at all. I am living with the billions of people on this earth who are wondering when the spread of convid-19 will end. In my home are the many who are stricken with the virus and the too many who have died. I I am not alone because my family and friends are calling or emailing or texting me to …

YOUNG WOMEN AND YOUNG MEN SPEAK OUT- AS NEVER BEFORE IN THE CHURCH
We cannot wait for our leaders to take action. “When leadership at the top is absent, civil society .. must strongly pressure Governments to broaden their concept of ‘national interest.’” This is our responsibility as much as our leaders. … The way to drive the political will to intervene here at home is to find inventive ways to describe the impact that the conflict abroad will have on our lives here, making the risk-taking more palatable and easier …

Our Orthodox Family Was Attacked On A Train. A Brave Muslim Woman Intervened.
AnonymousNovember 25, 2019
The author of this piece was filmed while he and his children were attacked on a train in London. The Forward normally identifies all of our op-ed writers, but the father expressed a fear of retaliation for speaking out, and has asked to remain anonymous. We have honored his request.
To many of you, the disturbing viral video of an anti-Semite ranting at a Jewish family on the underground is just that, a video. To our family, …

LOOKING DEEPLY AND THINKING DEEPLY
Father John Walsh

Transformation begins with the decision to courageously look deep within one’s “self.” In today’s culture meaning is derived outside of the inner reality of each person. Modernity focuses humanity on that which exists outside the individual, who, in turn, finds it hard to internalize within her or him that which comes from the outside. Time and energy are expended on the objects that entertain but are not meant to bring growth and understanding to who we humans are and who we can become. In …

RELIGIONS IN A SECULAR SOCIETY
Father John Walsh

Today’s world is a secular world. We are living in a secular age. Humans are now in charge. The gods have been abandoned. There is no supernatural world over and against the natural world. There is no God over and against the world in which we live our daily lives. Cultures are godless and society is soulless. In a secular setting religious traditions are unreasonable and simply no longer offer reasonable answers to the world’s most pressing questions. The Enlightenment of the seventeenth and …