Breaking Bad’s creator Vince Gilligan has said that while he wants to believe that there is a heaven, he cannot believe there is no hell. The characters in Breaking Bad surely sin and suffer, and God is not silent. But there is more to the God of Breaking Bad than judgment. He also offers grace to characters who, like those in Flannery O’Connor’s stories, ignore or misinterpret it time and again… . Continue Reading »
Our thanks to Edward Feser for his review of The Mystery of Existence: Why Is There Anything At All? (“Fifty Shades of Nothing,” First Things, July 24, 2013). Our book’s limited mission is to build appreciation for the most baffling of all enigmas: Why is there something rather than nothing? In its shadow, all the big questions”Does God exist? Why the universe? Life after death?”are eclipsed… . Continue Reading »
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus speaks the first words of his adult ministry not to his family or to his friends”but to his adversary, Satan, in the desert. He says,“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” And in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus begins his public ministry with these first words: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel” … Continue Reading »
“The most serious of the evils that afflict the world these days are youth unemployment and the loneliness of the old.” So begins the most recent papal interview, this one with Eugenio Scalfari, founder of the Italian paper La Repubblica, with whom Francis had already had an exchange of letters. If you look at that sentence as it stands, it sounds a bit incongruous… . Continue Reading »
The humanitarian and strategic disaster of Syria should focus Catholic minds on the hard fact that there is no easy or quick path to peace in the Middle East, a very dangerous part of the world where Christians of all persuasions are at daily risk of their lives. Two recently published books will help those eager to get beyond media sound-bites, wishful thinking, and vague pieties in order to think seriously about the realities that must be faced in a region with too little geography and too much history, where religiously-inspired passion too often leads to murder… . Continue Reading »
Throughout reactions and deliberations to the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons, the question of punishment has arisen on multiple occasions. Yet the importance of punishment”even its meaning and goals”has become contested and miserably confused. At some level, we still think that punishment matters in international politics. But we don’t understand why… . Continue Reading »
I picked up John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion some years back. Dipping into it, I anticipated a dry, grim, and doctrinaire treatise. Perhaps because I came to it with such low expectations, the books surprised me. I found the Institutes surprisingly accessible, written by a lively, engaged mind… . Continue Reading »
It has now been forty years since Al Pacino blazed across the screen in the classic police drama, Serpico. Based on the acclaimed book of the same name, it is that rarest of Hollywood films”an adaptation as exceptional as the book. Searing, deeply moral, and ultimately heartbreaking, it is as powerful today as it was the day it opened. And even more relevant… . Continue Reading »
In 1652, Catholicism was made illegal in Ireland. By 1673, across Ireland, military and civil officials were required to swear by oath that bread and wine could not be turned into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. The penalty for belief in the Eucharist was exile, prison, or death… . Continue Reading »
Rousing Soviet songs surround us as we pass through a gloomy gauntlet of titanic statues on our way to Kyiv’s Museum of the Great Patriotic War. My friends, a Polish and a Ukrainian pastor, remember the songs, which played incessantly on the radio during their childhood. The sculpture complex depicts lunging soldiers and hardy peasants in dignified poses, men pointing guns and women handling bombs, boys and girls, all united in a total war effort to defeat the Nazis… . Continue Reading »
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