The Victorian poet Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) is most celebrated for her popular Christmas carols, but her most prolific liturgical season was Lent. A fervent Anglican, Rossetti expressed in her poems a deeper understanding of suffering than pieces like “Love Came Down At Christmas” might lead you to suspect. In her Lenten poetry, she focuses not only on her own sins, but highlights how her intense brokenness united her to God. Continue Reading »
As we absorb the news of Pope Francis’s latest escapade—he accidentally cursed in front of an adoring audience—we are faced with a difficult but unavoidable truth. And that truth is: Pope Francis and Jennifer Lawrence are the same person.Continue Reading »
It’s very cool, very punk-rock, folk-rock, and all the other rockin’ signifiers of hip radicalism, to be going to a commune. Or to hang-out at one for a season. But to actually stay for good is not what rock-tuned set wants.How do we know that? Well, tell me about a rock song that celebrates . . . . Continue Reading »
Rock and roll has a rebellious sound. I write that hesitantly, because there is really no such thing as rock and roll, in terms of having a permanent nature or ongoing essence. Speed, loudness, and distorted acoustical effects do not a musical genre make. Rock is a mishmash of various musical . . . . Continue Reading »
Remarks delivered at Princeton University’s 2014 Annual Latke-Hamentaschen Debate. Our semi-official second national motto is e pluribus unum, famously mistranslated by Sarah Palin as “out of one, many,” but correctly translated as precisely the reverse: “out of many, . . . . Continue Reading »
Early light slants low across the lawn.Cuplike, this little valley brims with sun.Pages fill and empty. In the mistof a still morning, nothing’s out of . . . . Continue Reading »
The Fine Delight: Postconciliar Catholic Literature by nicholas ripatrazonewipf & stock, 202 pages, $23 Shortly after Robert Lowell’s conversion to Catholicism in 1941, he announced to his horrified wife, Jean Stafford, a lapsed Catholic, that he was instituting a new household . . . . Continue Reading »
Byrd by kerry mccarthyoxford, 304 pages, $39.95 Judging by the tracks programmed by my local classical music radio station, no composer of merit existed before the Baroque period. DJs with soothing voices regularly serve up Vivaldi, Handel, Scarlatti, and Bach, especially during rush hour. . . . . Continue Reading »
Afew months ago, the morning before my eldest brother was to return home to Norway after a long visit, I dreamed that I had just awakened in the early light of dawn to find my dog Roland sitting at the end of my bed, a bar of softly glaucous shadow—cast by the central casement frame of my . . . . Continue Reading »
The Future of Religious Freedom: Global Challengesedited by allen d. hertzke oxford, 386 pages, $29.95 In matters of religious freedom, we seem to be living in the best and the worst of times. The best, because an abstract, propositional assent to religious freedom as a fundamental human right . . . . Continue Reading »
