Phyllis Zagano
Phyllis Zagano is an author at Religion News Service.
All Stories by Phyllis Zagano
COMMENTARY: Glenn Beck’s bizarre alternate universe
By Phyllis Zagano — March 17, 2010
(RNS) So now Glenn Beck seems to want everybody else to leave the Catholic Church — or any church — because he thinks “social justice” is code for big government, Nazism and communism. On television and later on radio, Beck, a 46-year-old political entertainer who was raised Catholic but is now a Mormon, told his […]
COMMENTARY: Celebrate St. Patrick while it’s still legal
By Phyllis Zagano — March 3, 2010
(RNS) With political correctness storming the country, I’m waiting for someone to complain about St. Patrick’s Day. After all, it honors a Christian saint who spread his religious beliefs in a foreign land. Never mind that St. Patrick’s Day is the most widely celebrated Christian feast after Christmas and Easter. Christmas has been secularized: trees […]
COMMENTARY: Let’s call `emergency contraception’ what it really is
By Phyllis Zagano — February 17, 2010
(RNS) I do not want my taxes to pay for abortions. It is as simple as that. Nor, for that matter, do I want the military to pay for them on my behalf. While Congressional abortion-rights forces played a shell game with the House and Senate health care bills — trumping anti-abortion restrictions in one […]
COMMENTARY: Don’t bother opening Pandora’s box
By Phyllis Zagano — February 3, 2010
(RNS) OK, so I saw “Avatar,” the computer-generated “epic” in which the American military-industrial complex invades a planet full of tall blue pantheists. Here’s my review: Don’t waste your money. The predictable plot involves a former Marine who takes the place of his dead twin brother on a scientific excursion financed by a large military […]
COMMENTARY: Hope for Haiti
By Phyllis Zagano — January 21, 2010
(RNS) Just when you think nothing worse can happen, it does. They say as many as 200,000 people have died in Haiti; no one knows for sure. We might never know for sure. Viewed from space, Haiti is a rough-cut emerald in an azure sea. On the ground it is, and has been for centuries, […]
COMMENTARY: Garbage in, garbage out
By Phyllis Zagano — January 6, 2010
(RNS) With a fresh 2010 calendar before us, we try to shake off memories of disturbing tales from Christmas 2009. A mentally disturbed woman tackled Pope Benedict XVI on Christmas Eve. A young Nigerian man tried to blow up a plane on Christmas Day. She is 25. He is 23. Do they represent out common […]
COMMENTARY: We’re all in this together
By Phyllis Zagano — December 16, 2009
(RNS) Lots of people think war is never justified. President Obama is not one of them. While accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway not long ago, he invoked “just war” theory. Theologians and philosophers from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas to men of modernity have wrestled with the balance of war and peace. Most […]
COMMENTARY: Do you see what I see?
By Phyllis Zagano — December 2, 2009
(RNS) Want to know what Christmas is about? Go see the film “Precious,” the story of an abused teenaged girl in Harlem who finds a way out for herself and her two young children. I know the upscale critics at The New York Times and The Washington Post panned it. The Times called it “demeaning” […]
COMMENTARY: The upside-down economics of health care reform
By Phyllis Zagano — November 18, 2009
(RNS) We’ve watched Congress debate, position, and confuse the nation with various proposals for national health care reform. What we haven’t seen is lawmakers focusing on lobbyists and drug companies. It’s time to connect some dots. Let’s start with a few facts at the outset: 1. I think most people agree that access to quality […]
COMMENTARY: For Catholic and converts, it’s the marriage thing
By Phyllis Zagano — November 4, 2009
(RNS) Announcement of the Vatican’s expanded policy on accepting Anglican priests and parishes fueled worldwide commentary, none more trenchant than that of Lawrence Provenzano, the incoming Episcopal bishop of Long Island, N.Y. Provenzano wrote, “At the heart of all this is the reality that the Roman Catholic Church is willing to welcome angry, reactionary, misogynistic, […]
COMMENTARY: Protecting children from the media gaze
By Phyllis Zagano — October 21, 2009
(RNS) It doesn’t matter whether 6-year-old Falcon Heene was in the balloon or not. He’s become an international joke along with the rest of his family. That’s a sad situation for a first-grader whose moment of network TV fame included becoming ill on camera — twice. The Heene family’s startling launch to celebrity, via televised […]
COMMENTARY: There is no life in state-sanctioned killing
By Phyllis Zagano — October 7, 2009
(RNS) Every so often, the glint of morality — or common sense — flashes across the television screen. Witness a recent episode of the television drama “House.” One doctor tells another: “It is impossible to take another person’s life and remain unchanged.” That’s all I’ll say; I don’t want to ruin the program for you […]
COMMENTARY: Let them throw pie
By Phyllis Zagano — September 23, 2009
NEW YORK — By all accounts, Regis Philbin is a good guy. So I can’t understand why he and co-host Kelly Ripa staged a 270-person pie fight during “Live’s Guinness World Record Breaker Week.” Volunteers covered West 67th Street — and each other — with mounds of coconut custard. They handily overturned the previous record […]
COMMENTARY: Promise and peril
By Phyllis Zagano — September 9, 2009
(UNDATED) Question: What are the three most important words in President Obama’s Tuesday (Sept. 8) speech to America’s schoolchildren? Or any presidential speech, for that matter? Answer: God bless America. These three closing words of Obama’s speech encapsulate both the promise and the peril of Obama’s policy measures. They demonstrate the promise, because the president […]
COMMENTARY: Learning from me, learning from them
By Phyllis Zagano — August 26, 2009
(UNDATED) Back-to-school jitters aren’t only for the students. Every teacher gearing up for another term also wonders what the first day of classes will bring. Certainly, it will bring a lot of students. This year, U.S. colleges and universities will enroll about 17.5 million students — that’s nearly equal the population of Chile — and […]
