Columns
April 2, 2021
That he still bore scars is what I’ve always thought so beautiful. It’s what’s intrigued me more than almost anything else all these years about the story so many celebrate at Easter all over the world, believers, half-believers, unbelievers too. The story of resurrection, the idea of it, the hope of it.
April 1, 2021
Brutal are the reminders of our creatureliness, our frail nakedness.
April 1, 2021
A democracy fighting for its life, a body politic trying to survive: that’s what we’re seeing in Myanmar.
January 25, 2019
It was the hat, you see, that smile, that smirk. Julie Irwin Zimmerman, writing for The Atlantic, called it a Rorschach test, which is the best way to think of that viral scene involving students from Covington Catholic High School and Nathan Phillips. Proving true what C.S. Lewis wrote: What you see and hear depends upon your point […]
February 19, 2019
What passes for Christianity, what people see and mistake for Christianity, that’s what’s wrong with it. That Christianity — the phenomena, not the faith — has been eclipsed by parody; it’s why so many dismiss it. Because what’s laughable and incredible isn’t genuine Christianity, but rather a counterfeit too often misconstrued for the real thing.
February 28, 2019
My wife and I, we have four children, all younger than 7. Ours is not a quiet house. A house of screaming and a house of endless snot, it’s also a house of love, grown and multiplied every few years. In a house of little sleep, my hobby these days is simply to sit down; fellow […]
March 3, 2019
“What is most contrary to salvation is not sin but habit.” These are the words of Charles Péguy, instigator, poet, soldier, Catholic. And they’re words which, for me, come to mind as we begin our Lent again. He was talking about those habits which control us, shape us, which although small by themselves, together can define […]
March 11, 2019
In his 1942 memoir, Austrian writer Stephan Zweig tells of hearing Hitler’s voice on the radio while riding a train in Texas, of hearing in real time about bombings and atrocities from all over the world, an experience which was new in human history and not altogether welcome. “Thanks to our new methods of spreading news […]
April 22, 2019
It is hard to describe the loss of Notre Dame. When the poet Rainer Maria Rilke lived in Paris, each evening on his way home, he stopped as he crossed the Siene on the Île de la Cité to watch the sun set over Notre Dame. The darkening ancient towers silent against the new, awakening, electric […]