On the Ever-Accelerating Passage of Time
In one of his Blackford Oakes novels, William F. Buckley Jr. had a character crack a Wagnerian joke along these lines: What is Siegfried? Siegfried is the opera that begins at 7 p.m.
The Summer Reading List: A Ukrainian Primer
Given the rubbish about Ukraine spewed out by Russian propaganda trolls and regurgitated by foolish or ideologically besotted Americans, this year’s annual summer reading list will focus on serious books
Holy Week 2022: A Wartime Meditation
In both the Roman and Byzantine liturgical calendars, Lent 2022 has coincided with a brutal war in Ukraine. That war was launched by Russia’s Vladimir Putin for an ignoble, imperial
Lent, Gianlorenzo Bernini, and the Liberating Lightness of Truth
If you’ve not been in the Vatican basilica on February 22, the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, by all means put that on your bucket list. Not only
The Sacred Earthiness of Christmas
ROME. A massive, sixteen-volume Lives of the Saints, first published between 1872 and 1877, informs me that, here in the Eternal City, the feast of Christmas first became a celebration distinct
Books for Christmas 2021
Some suggestions for Christmas giving, in the form of books that amuse, inspire, educate, or all of the above: Prison Journal, Volume 3—The High Court Frees an Innocent Man, by
The 2021 Summer Reading List
Liberation from lockdowns and quarantines ought not be liberation from serious reading, opportunities for which being one of the few boons of the recent past. Here are some suggestions for
The Oldest Cathedral and the Newest Challenge
It’s now the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but for native Baltimoreans of a certain vintage (like me) it is, was, and
The First U.S. Cathedral Turns 200
Baltimore’s Bishop John Carroll had a decision to make. It was 1805, and the diocese then encompassed the entire U.S. Years before, Pope Pius VI had urged Carroll to build
What the Magi Teach Us
Among the tenured professorial skeptics, few Gospel episodes have been sliced, diced, and tossed to the dissecting room floor as “mythology” more often than the story of the Magi: the
Books for Christmas—2020
How bad a year has it been? Let me not count the ways. Good books can hearten us in 2021 and beyond, though. Herewith, then, some suggestions for Christmastide book-giving:
Thanksgiving and the Paradox of Death
The juxtaposition of Thanksgiving with the Church’s annual month of prayer for the dead hadn’t previously struck me with force; that it did this year has something to do, I
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