Reading the obituaries of Sister Mary Luke Tobin, who recently died at 98, inspired reminiscences of her and other women religious. Their numbers are down from 180,000 forty years ago to 68,000 now. Soon few will remember the era of habit-garbed nuns.
According to a recent Bloomberg News survey, researchers for the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine asked people to answer two easy questions: How tall are you? How much do you weigh? After considering the responses, researchers concluded that people lie. Gender differences play a role: Women want to be lighter, and they lie about their weight. Men want to be taller, and they lie about their height.
While doing research for a talk on religion and violence, I kept running into accounts of people who selectively quote the Qur’an to show how it commits Muslims to killing “us” infidels. That research inspired dour thoughts of the sort that I do not often let intrude on this page.
On policy: since 9/11 anyone who whispers that the nation has not acted well gets dismissed as treasonously unpatriotic. Count me out. I devoted years to writing the history of religion in America, a beloved place whose ground I kiss when I return from travels.