Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, a close friend of Pope John Paul II, physicist, and New York Times columnist, shows that religion has a place amid conversations on science and contemporary culture. With humor and honesty, Albacete answers questions about life and death, good and evil, science and religion, religion and politics, and other issues.

We live in a time of uncertainty. We like to think that we live in a peaceful, ordered society, but again and again we have discovered that the darkness of blind violence can envelop us at any time, like in Newtown or in Bos- ton. We take comfort in our general prosperity, but we have an uneasy feeling that the current economic crisis, with its high unemployment rate, is different from others in the past, and that things may get worse rather than better. We cherish our freedom, but we worry about the manipulation of democracy by powerful, apparently invincible forces. Such uncertainty seems...