A wise man knows that he must put things into perspective, but a still wiser man knows what perspective to put them into. A doctor who tells the widow of a patient who has just died that, after all, her husband’s was only one of 2,800,000 deaths a year in the United States alone (56,000,000 . . . . Continue Reading »
During the Diocletian persecution, a group of North African Christians were brought to trial in Carthage for meeting illegally for worship. When asked why they had persisted in this practice, one replied, “Sine Dominico, non possumus”: “Without this thing of the Lord, we cannot live.” Over . . . . Continue Reading »
At the beginning of book VII of Virgil’s Aeneid, auspicious winds send the ships of the Trojan hero and his warriors to the mouth of the Tiber, where they put ashore. An oracle has foretold their coming. Aeneas is welcomed by the king of the Latins, and an alliance is forged. The king’s . . . . Continue Reading »
Catholic schools serve the common good of Catholics but also the nation as a whole. Continue Reading »
Love surrounds us, among friends and in families, and in countless kindnesses. Continue Reading »
In this time of social isolation, I have revisited several classic plague texts. Continue Reading »
It is providential that the pandemic of 2020 has coincided with Lent and Easter. Continue Reading »
A society that condemns the sick to die alone needs to reexamine its basic principles. Continue Reading »
Friday, March 20. A light fog hangs in the air in the early morning as I walk uptown to see what’s going on at the big hospitals a few blocks north of my neighborhood. The magnolias, crabapple trees, and forsythias are in splendid bloom on the spacious grounds of Rockefeller University, next to . . . . Continue Reading »
With just over 120,000 people, Bergamo, northeast of Milan, is not a particularly populous city, and it is short of priests, like almost every other city in the Catholic West. Yet in the second week of March alone, six priests died of coronavirus in Bergamo, and five more died the week after. By . . . . Continue Reading »
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