Rev. John Hagee, the pastor of a San Antonio mega-church, has been a major Evangelical figure for many years. But since his endorsement of Sen. John McCain for president, the name Reverend Hagee has become synonymous with anti-Catholicism. A few days ago I met with Hagee and his wife, Diana, in New York City for … Read more
As promised, I will end this trilogy on American classical music (see the previous January and February installments) by covering some of the recent releases of works by composers of whom you have probably never heard. I believe their music demonstrates what I have contended in my last two missives: that American music has recovered … Read more
In his 2008 World Day of Peace address, Pope Benedict XVI made clear that human beings “are of supreme worth vis-Ã -vis creation as a whole.” He explained that respecting the environment does not mean considering “material or animal nature more important than man.” According to some early accounts, this amounted to a “surprise attack” on … Read more
Filmmaker Andrew Niccol, probably best known for his role as the writer of The Truman Show, likes to describe his stories as “films set about five minutes in the future.” And while some movies claim to have been snatched from today’s headlines, few would suggest that they are the headlines of tomorrow. Â Consider God’s … Read more
“Mom, mom!” a tense, tightly curled nine-year-old hissed from the pew in front of me. “Mom, the Lord is stuck in my retainer.” My own post-Eucharist prayer expanded, I considered the last time I, too, got stuck with the Lord. One April morning three years ago, after sending children to school and husband to work, … Read more
They weren’t there. As we gathered at the front of the cathedral, on a day of bitter cold more suited to Christmas than to Holy Week, we had the holy cards and the placard. We were a happy group, enthusiastically greeting newcomers, calling out to old friends, making introductions. But the Other Group wasn’t there. … Read more
My niece’s husband is a trainee Baptist pastor. Jimbo’s hip, friendly, and fun to be with. He’s smart and theologically savvy. I like him. He loves Jesus and believes the Bible, and on most moral and doctrinal issues I can affirm what he affirms. We agree on a lot. But even when we agree, we … Read more
I am writing this unsolicited memo to help the Obama campaign understand the Catholic vote. It has been the practice of Democratic presidential candidates, including former Vice President Al Gore and Sen. John Kerry, to enlist the help of well-known Catholic dissenters as advisers to their campaigns (no need to name names). As a result, … Read more
One of the themes that sometimes pops up in Catholic reflections during Easter is the idea of the Resurrection as a sort of divine practical joke. There are grounds for it from both a human and from a supernatural perspective. As Garrison Keillor points out, the disciples on the Emmaus Road were the happy victims … Read more
Sen. John McCain cannot win in November without the Catholic vote, which is around 25 percent of the electorate. How is he going to get it? The worst thing he could assume is that it is going to fall into his lap because Catholics will have nowhere else to go. Some people with nowhere to … Read more
Ron Paul received a campaign contribution from a neo-Nazi. Mike Huckabee made a public visit to the church of evangelical pastor John Hagee, known for his anti-Catholicism. After Huckabee freed himself of the mess, John McCain landed in it with Hagee’s endorsement. Now, Barack Obama is struggling to do damage control following his decades-long association … Read more
"And God created man in His own image; in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them." I cite the Masoretic text of this famous passage from the first chapter in Genesis, for it is the more poetic, and it conveys something of the dance of complementary opposites — the … Read more
A few days ago, Osama bin Laden released a message threatening Benedict XVI for leading a “new Crusade” against Islam. Whether he meant to or not, the Holy Father issued a ringing answer to the architect of 9/11 by receiving into the Church Europe’s most vocal Muslim critic of bin Laden and Islamic terrorism. Magdi … Read more
In an article in the Washington Post last fall, Charlotte F. Allen offered her sneaking suspicions about American healthcare. Addressing the issue of the “living will,” she wrote: When I contemplate the concept of “dying well,” I can’t avoid the uneasy feeling that it actually means “dying when we, the intellectual elite, think it is … Read more
If you examine an icon, you will notice that the figure in it will often be breaking out of the frame. Sometimes the hands, sometimes the halo, sometimes both are outside the border framing the image. That’s no accident. It’s part of what iconography is trying to get us to see: that the supernatural is … Read more
J. R. R. Tolkien spent nearly 20 pages defining fairy tales in his 1946 essay “On Fairy-Stories” (found in The Tolkien Reader). This essay, a favorite of his friend C. S. Lewis’s, summarizes many of the attitudes toward storytelling that guided his creation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Â Tolkien’s insights provide general … Read more
One recent evening just days before Easter found me sitting on the hardwood of our living room floor. My son had turned three, and this had been a long day of special breakfasts, paper-wrapped surprises, remote-control cars, and a Cookie Monster birthday cake. But now, as bedtime approached, I was sitting for a moment, watching … Read more
When I moved my family to New Hampshire in the fall of 2001 and we were casting around for a good parish (not as simple as it sounds — Catholic life here in the most secular state in the country hasn’t been done many favors during the reign of Cardinal Law’s former lieutenant, Bishop … Read more
Such is the paranoid tendency of our hyperbolic Western media that one could be forgiven for thinking Russia is reverting to its Communist past. But if we ignore the hysteria of the press (in whose interest it is, after all, to have crises instead of stability) and actually dig beneath the surface, we might actually … Read more
The February 20 issue of the Denver Catholic Register published a column on the Jesuits titled "Some Questions for Father General" by George Weigel. In response, the president of the University of San Francisco, Rev. Stephen A. Privett, S.J., published "Attack on Jesuits Out of Place" in Catholic San Francisco, the archdiocesan newspaper. Father … Read more
