Of all the works of mercy, probably the most thankless and despised is admonishing the sinner. Nobody wants to do it (except human toothaches and people who never get invited to parties), and nobody wants it done to them. “Repent!” is one of those words that eats at the heart of all but the most … Read more
That watercolor picture in Peter Rabbit of Old Mrs. Rabbit coming along a sandy path in the woods with her red kerchief and market basket may have stuck in the memory of readers. Certainly it has in mine. The Beatrix Potter books drew my young imagination into a world that seemed to cast a warm … Read more
This weekend, we Americans celebrate 234 years of national independence. For most of that time, we rejoiced that two broad oceans protected us from foreign wars and enemies. No more: The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, removed forever any doubt on that score. What is the appropriate response? To that question there is … Read more
Even among fantasy devotees who recognize Tolkien as the father of the modern genre, few realize that Tolkien insisted that The Lord of the Rings is “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work.” This probably comes as a surprise to most Catholics as well. Readers of The Lord of the Rings are unlikely to find … Read more
There are lessons of wisdom to be found in every folly, however painful the extraction. The ongoing, almost comic bungling efforts and non-efforts of the federal government dealing with the oil spill in the gulf is no exception. The most important political lesson is both conservative and Catholic. The conservative lesson? When dealing with a … Read more
Whenever the moral confusions facing our Church begin to trouble me, to give me the slightest sense that the gates of Hell really might be prevailing, I know what to do: Stop reading that document from the USCC — just put it down, kick it across the room — and pick up something more uplifting, … Read more
Doubt can be the emotional equivalent of anything from a brief spring rain to a Galveston-destroying hurricane. People can feel doubt over whether to place two bucks on the Mariners to win (don’t) or about whether the God in whom they have believed all their life is a sham, a fraud, and a delusion. Doubt … Read more
When I arrived at Emory University for my doctoral studies in 1974, I had just finished three years at Princeton Theological Seminary as an aspiring Southern Baptist minister. Despite being a Southern Baptist from Texas, and having pursued Reformation studies — Calvin, Luther, and the Anabaptists — at Princeton, I was more than just intellectually … Read more
The Myth of Pope Joan Alain Boureau, translated by Lydia Cochrane, University of Chicago Press, 2001, 385 pages, $60 Pope Joan is one of the most tenacious myths of the Middle Ages, told and retold by Catholics and anti-Catholics alike since the 13th century. It is said that beautiful young Joan, an Englishwoman born in … Read more
It sounds like something that would at one time have been every British Catholic’s dream: The pope comes to England for a state visit; he is received by Her Majesty the Queen; he addresses members of Parliament in Westminster’s Great Hall, where St. Thomas More was tried four centuries earlier; and he celebrates a great … Read more
Drawing crackpot connections between seemingly unrelated things is a key skill for a writer. Whatever is actually happening in the world, he can use it to prove a point about whatever he was thinking about already. Metaphysical poet John Donne took a flea that he squished with a fingernail and stretched it out as a … Read more
There’s an objection that Protestants sometimes pose to Catholics: Why should I confess my sins to a man, when I could simply confess alone, in my room, to God? I’m sure there are all kinds of theological answers to this question. But I want to talk about what the presence of the “other person,” … Read more
Back in 1971, when experiments in educational theory from pointy-headed intellectuals with no children were just starting to become all the rage, my fellow seventh graders and I were pulled out of what used to be called a “junior high” and packed off to a newly built experiment in education called Eisenhower Middle School. It … Read more
I took the year off from Father’s Day yesterday. For several years I’d been making a point, in my secular newspaper column, of writing something quite opposite to “feel-good” on the subject for the Sunday corresponding to this secular occasion. But glancing through the last couple of them, I thought, “That’s enough now: People are … Read more
When I was a young man, I always assumed parents loved their adopted children less, or at least differently, than those who genetically shared their flesh and blood. When I thought of myself as a father, it never occurred to me that I might one day love my adopted son as much as my biological … Read more
The cry, “That violates the separation of church and state!” has been the centerpiece of the secularist drive to marginalize Christianity in the public sphere since the 1940s. The real — and often neglected — question is what precisely that separation means and how it should be interpreted and applied. The secularists’ interpretation of the … Read more
Since it became the latest media sensation, commentators have attempted to exploit whatever demographic or philosophical fault lines they can discover within the Tea Party protest movement. One of the media’s favorite themes so far has been the alleged tension between fiscal and social conservatives, or between libertarians and Christians. Some believe that incidents such … Read more
My first meeting with the bishop of Phoenix is at his home rectory of Sts. Simon and Jude. He’s halfway through Tuesday morning prayer with three other priests when I enter the small, unadorned room. Before I can register that there are only four seats, Bishop Thomas Olmsted kneels on the hard floor and motions … Read more
It was on the feast of Christ the King. I remember it because it was a particularly gorgeous day in Buenos Aires, and we seminarians had been given the afternoon off in order to tour the city. We went to the renowned Church of Our Lady of Pilar, though I was not as impressed with … Read more
Granting all the wonderful, important things modern scriptural scholarship has given us, it bears within it something dreadfully wrong. If you have had the misfortune of coming into earshot of all too many of our contemporary scriptural scholars, they will assure you that scholarship, properly speaking, must strip both the Old and New Testaments of … Read more