This business of signing the inside covers of books is both charming and macabre. People die; books live forever. Scrawling on a flyleaf is a down payment on immortality. Think of me, it says. Memento mori. Continue Reading »
When we pledge our faithfulness to another on our wedding day, we’re mocking the changeableness of life, saying that we trust in the covenant of marriage to transcend the weakness of our flesh, the fickleness of our passions, and the fragility of our egos. Continue Reading »
Whatever one thinks about the day that bears his name—so unjustly desacralized, in my opinion—it seems fitting that this day still retains a memory of a love which is hidden. Continue Reading »
Kennedy at his inauguration and medieval theologians agree: humans owe their existence to something beyond themselves, and they should live in light of that debt. Continue Reading »
A new document indicates just how weak Roman Catholic moral theology could become. Continue Reading »
A familiar Washington script exists for Republican Supreme Court nominations. Once the president announces his choice, Democrats and advocacy groups on the left start issuing dire warnings about the threat the nominee poses to the Constitution, the law, and the American way of life. The words are always the same: The nominee is “extreme,” “outside the mainstream,” “radical,” and “far-right wing.” Continue Reading »
There are many things in our government that are “broken,” but our refugee vetting system isn’t one of them. We needn't, and therefore we shouldn't, shut out refugees who are fleeing terrorism in places such as Syria and Iraq, even temporarily. Because it isn't necessary to do it, it is, in my opinion, necessary not to do it. Continue Reading »
The devoutly Catholic Bruckner dedicated his last symphony to “the dear God,” and prayed in his final illness that the Lord would allow him to finish his masterwork. In the event, his prayer was not granted. Yet in a deeper sense the three movements he lived to complete could hardly be surpassed. The sublime and harrowing third movement makes any further statement, this side of heaven, redundant! Continue Reading »
Forty-four years after Roe, a reverence for the sanctity of human life still burns in the spirit of far too many people to ignore. Continue Reading »
In the secular world, Luther has come to stand for the overthrow of traditional authority in favor of individual subjectivity. Continue Reading »
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