Francesca Aran Murphy

Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faithby eve tushnetave maria, 224 pages, $15.95 I have almost no conscious interest in the possibilities of being gay and Catholic, so I find it hard to explain why I was first drawn to Eve Tushnet’s writing over a decade . . . . Continue Reading »

David Bentley Hart has written a classic of Christian apologetics. Works of apologetics are defenses of the Christian faith. A defense is different both tactically and strategically from an attack. It doesn’t intend to dismantle the opponent’s position, except insofar as the . . . . Continue Reading »

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant contended that struggle is the motive force of human civilization. Through his successors, especially Hegel, the somewhat oxymoronic idea of armed combat as the motor of civilization came to permeate German high culture and soon Western . . . . Continue Reading »

In my fifteen years in Aberdeen, the Old Aberdeen mosque went from a tiny to a flourishing enterprise, with Muslim men overflowing the building onto the surrounding streets. Between 1995 and 2010 in northeast Scotland, the sight of women in burqas and niqabs went from rare to commonplace. The . . . . Continue Reading »

Catholics today are encouraged to give up for Lent “favorite things” that are often less tangible than “whiskers on kittens” and “warm woollen mittens.” But there is something important to be said for the traditional practice of giving up meat. I have been abstaining from meat on Fridays and through Lent for about five years and have discovered … Continue Reading »