When my mother-in-law died, following a long and unhappy illness, her passing was seen by all as a blessed and merciful release. Free at last—that was the universal refrain among family and friends. It was not just the burden of old age, whose cumulative debilities wore her down, but the ravages of Alzheimer’s, which left … Read more
I seem to remember reading somewhere that if you were to stretch along a continuum all the notes Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ever produced, at least a billion miles would be needed to cover the distance. Whoever wrote that had no doubt been a keen and appreciative student of Mozart’s music, but clearly knew nothing about … Read more
When our children were very young—full of beans and wonder—I would often tell them the story of young Henry, whose mother had wisely packed him a sandwich and apple before sending him and his little dog off to explore a distant and dangerous world. His travels took them as far as the backyard where, encircled … Read more
Years ago when our children were young and bursting with that innocence of wonder that I pray will never entirely leave them, I was asked when I thought God would open the clouds and come down. “How should I know?” I’d answer. “I’m only a theologian. Go ask your mother.” Evidently they did, since I … Read more
Near the end of a long and distinguished life, spanning nearly the entire nineteenth century, John Henry Cardinal Newman (declared Blessed by Pope Benedict in 2010), was asked about something he’d written. Now Newman, who was no slouch by any standard, had written a great many things, all of them of a very high order, … Read more
Among the entitlements that apply to every Catholic, there is one whose violation in recent years has become all too frequent, and that is the right to remain secure in the faith we received in baptism. How else are we to confront our persecutors? Unless we are made to feel, on the strength of a … Read more
Hope is the thing with feathers, That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all… ∼ Emily Dickinson If hope is a virtue we cannot reach heaven without, where then is the handle we need to take hold of to get there? The answer is prayer, which is … Read more
In a recent interview in America (October 12, 2015), in which the editor of the flagship Jesuit journal, Fr. Matt Malone, S.J., sat down with the vice president of the United States, Joseph R. Biden Jr., a series of soft balls were thrown and, to no one’s surprise, every blessed one was slammed right out … Read more
In Morituri Salutamus, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s moving tribute to fallen friends, the poet himself remains surprisingly serene in the face of death, fortified against every indication of its imminence. While it is not unmanly, he insists, to lament those who are no more, the game is not yet over for the rest of us. “Ah,” … Read more
“But suppose God didn’t quite finish by closing time of the afternoon of the sixth day? …Suppose that Creation, the process of replacing chaos with order, were still going on. What would that mean? In the biblical metaphor of the six days of Creation, we would find ourselves somewhere in the middle of Friday afternoon. Man was just created a … Read more
I was still an undergraduate when, in the summer of 1970, I first laid eyes on Spain, spending seven or so heady weeks in the bright shadow of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, an immense, intimidating pile built by Philip II in the shape of a huge gridiron on which its patron, St. Lawrence, had … Read more
What does one do when faced with obvious and widespread wickedness? Are there protocols to consult that enable one precisely to know what ethical course of action to take? And how do these protocols work when so many of one’s own countrymen seem not to have noticed, or particularly to care, that awful things are … Read more
The time was 1941, the war then raging across Europe had entered its third terrible year, and a young Catholic philosopher by the name of Josef Pieper had just brought out a book, a lovely little thing of less than sixty pages, called A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart. Amazingly enough, … Read more
“Where shall the word be found, where will the word Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence…” ∼ T.S. Eliot, Ash-Wednesday One of the truly awful torments of modern life, from whose myriad aggressions no one is entirely safe, is noise. More and more, it fills the space that was once marked by that silence … Read more
It was during the great slugfest of 1968, which marked the beginning of a fierce and protracted battle for the soul of America, that I threw my first electoral punch. Doing my bit, you might say, to help Richard Nixon deliver the necessary knockout blow to the Democrats. Here (I thought) was the Party of … Read more
“In my beginning is my end.” ∼ T.S. Eliot In a passage often cited from the Pensees, which the author sets down in grim and graphic detail, Pascal summons the reader to reflect on the awful finality of death. “The last act is bloody,” he tells us, “however fine the rest of the play. … Read more
When we consider the Christmas Miracle, it is worth recalling the fact that Joseph does not at once repudiate his betrothed, despite his discovery that she is pregnant with another’s child. It is an astonishing development. How painfully bewildering it must have been for him, however, to try and account for a conception for which … Read more
“Legislation is helpless against the wild prayer of longing.” ∼ L. H. Auden “I did not know my longing until I encountered You.” ∼ CL Hymn The desire for God is a drive as deep as it is indestructible. There can be no other longing as profound or pervasive. And on the strength of … Read more
“Do not conform yourselves to this age.” ∼ St. Paul, Letter to the Romans (12:2) Living in a world where much has been laid waste by forces hostile to faith and hope, the challenge becomes that of finding evidence for the things that one loves. Or simply going mad in the face of all … Read more
It has become the fashion among the wise and the clever, and most everyone else these days itching to be trendier than thou, to dismiss all the miracle stories of the New Testament on the grounds that such fantasy food is fit only for fools and simpletons. A German scholar by the name of Rudolf … Read more