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
AM[D]G
Last November 11, on the centenary of its relocation to a 93-acre campus in suburban Washington, D.C., Georgetown Preparatory School announced a $60 million capital campaign. In his message for
Books for the Summer of Our Discontent
These past few months, I expect many folks have found themselves resorting to the page and the lamp more often; may that literary trend continue long after our public health
“The Heavens Declare the Glory of God…”
In his Life of St. Augustine, the 5th-century bishop Possidius tells us that the greatest of the Latin Doctors of the Church, knowing that his earthly end was near, had four
Rediscovering Baptism in Plague-Time
On April 29, 1951, Father Thomas Love, SJ, baptized me in the Church of Sts. Philip and James, near Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Family legend has it that I
Transforming Quarantine Into Retreat
This bruising Lent, in which “fasting” has assumed unprecedented new forms, seems likely to be followed by an Eastertide of further spiritual disruption. What is God’s purpose in all this?
The Clerisy of the Concrete-And-Glass Box Freaks Out
Several years back, the estimable Father Paul Scalia observed, of some cultural idiocy or other, “Who knew the end of civilization would be so amusing?” I detected a subtle theological
Christmas, Freedom, and Obedience
On December 17, the day the first “O Antiphon” signaled the intensification of preparations for Christmas, the Church read the genealogy of Jesus from Matthew’s Gospel: Writing for a predominantly
The Well-Fought Fight
The incorporation of Anglican hymnody into English-language Catholic worship is one of the great blessings of the past 50 years. And within that noble musical patrimony, Ralph Vaughan Williams surely
Books for Christmas—2019
Resist the twitterization of thought—give books for Christmas! The following titles will delight, instruct, edify (or all of the above): Churchill: Walking with Destiny, by Andrew Roberts (Viking): There seems
Ironies in the Fire
The eminent sociologist Peter Rossi was a world-class punster whose scholarly accomplishments fed a sometimes-whimsical view of the human condition—in which, Rossi memorably observed, “there are many ironies in the
Getting Beyond Darwin
Bishop Robert Barron and others working hard to evangelize the “Nones”—young adults without religious conviction—tell us that a major obstacle to a None embracing Christianity is the cultural assumption that
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