Drew Christiansen SJ

Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the refusal of the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden, the United States of America invaded Afghanistan with the aim of putting an end to the Taliban regime and expelling al Qaeda from the territory. Within three months Kabul was conquered and a transition government, led… Read the full article

One of the profoundest achievements of the Second Vatican Council was the positive shift in Catholic relations with Judaism, and, in the decades following, the flourishing of those relationships with a steady flow of documents, encounters and exchanges.[1] In October 1960, Saint John XXIII anticipated this epochal reconciliation with his greeting to an American Jewish… Read the full article

The United Nations has aspired to the abolition of nuclear weapons since its inception. The first UN General Assembly called for “the prohibition of the use of atomic energy for military purposes and the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable now or in the future to mass… Read the full article

January 6 should have been a day of quiet confidence for American Catholics. Joe Biden had been elected president and the Congress was about to confirm the popular vote. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, as she opened the House session, took  note of the Feast of the Epiphany and prayed the Peace Prayer attributed… Read the full article

  FR Michael Kelly, SJ interviews his colleague Drew Christiansen SJ about this article and developments in US domestic politics in the last few weeks The journalist Robin Wright, writing in The New Yorker (September 8, 2020, online), asks, “Is America a Myth?”, a myth that no longer holds the country together. Unlike other countries… Read the full article

When the U.S. bishops began drafting their ground-breaking pastoral letter on nuclear weapons, “The Challenge of Peace,”[1] in the early 1980s, Bill Spohn, a brother Jesuit and a fellow ethicist, was a colleague on the faculty of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. All faculty members at that time were engaged in dialogues with… Read the full article

During the Cold War the dominant strategic doctrine was MAD—Mutually Assured Destruction. The irony of the English acronym was grimly acknowledged by proponents and critics alike. You would have to be crazy to initiate a nuclear war that would bring destruction on a global scale. It appears, however, that those MAD days are upon us… Read the full article

The Liberal World Order (LWO) established after World War II is eroding rapidly. The world, especially the Western world, is experiencing a breakdown of responsible governance. Governments withdraw from treaties and agreements; formerly strong governments like Germany’s Grand Coalition are put in question; alliances fray, and international organizations and programs lack funding and the consensus… Read the full article