February 9, 2020
In the novel An Accidental Man by Iris Murdoch there’s a scene at the beginning of the death of the matriarch of a well-to-do middle-class family in London. The nearly-deceased was not really loved, or at least there was little positive affection in a family comprised of members so benignly self-centered. They were awkwardly present at […]
January 26, 2020
A rhetorical question, it was very much meant to sting. Paul to the Corinthians: he asked them, “Is Christ divided?”[1] It was a question which called into question everything; it was existential.
January 1, 2020
Innumerable things are said of her. But for us, at this moment, let us remember simply that Mary is the first.
December 28, 2019
He likely knew it was a dumb idea from the beginning. At the end of his life, it looks like he changed his mind, became more practical. Or maybe it was Socrates who was the foolish idealist; maybe it’s the mature Plato we discover in his later writings, certainly a more sensible Plato.
December 22, 2019
It should be required reading, I think, for members of the clergy: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, that masterpiece of American literature and of the American psyche.