Cassandra Nelson’s “A Theology of Fiction” (April) is a welcome intervention and advance in an ongoing conversation that, as Nelson herself notes, I’ve been invested in for some time. Nelson’s attentiveness to the work of Sr. Mariella Gable—and her related readings of a series . . . . Continue Reading »
In November 1945, Jacques Maritain wrote a letter to his friend Étienne Gilson in which he complained about “the integralists in Quebec” who were accusing him of “neo-liberalism, neo-individualism,” and “neo-Pelagianism.” Maritain was particularly frustrated because he saw the . . . . Continue Reading »
I am grateful to Edmund Waldstein for his kind response to my essay, and for his writings on these subjects generally. I am especially grateful in this case for his crisp elucidation of the Maritain–De Koninck debate and its implications for contemporary arguments, a subject whose subtleties I . . . . Continue Reading »
How should contemporary Christians react to the decline of their churches, the secularization of the culture, the final loss of Christendom? Perhaps, one important author has suggested, they should reconcile themselves to the new dispensation, accepting that the “modern age is not a sacral, but a . . . . Continue Reading »
Although Christopher Alexander, who died this year on March 17, was officially an architect, the significance of his life lay in the challenge he posed to architecture. In a sense, he did not believe that -architects were necessary. Put a small group of people on a building site, give them materials . . . . Continue Reading »
In the first, surreal weeks of the lockdowns of 2020, we all marveled at how COVID had hit at just the right time. Thanks to our Silicon Valley saviors, we had the perfect technologies to shift all “nonessential” activities and gatherings into virtual space. Zoom, which few of us had heard of in . . . . Continue Reading »
“I doubt if we ever come back home,” says Helen, who until recently taught English to second- and third-graders in Mykolaiv, a southern Ukrainian city of several hundred thousand. “Putin wants Mykolaiv,” Helen says. A large majority of Mykolaiv residents speak Russian at home. The . . . . Continue Reading »
Italy, once the country of large families with many children, is today a country of the elderly. Twenty-three percent of the Italian population is over the age of sixty-five, and the mean age of Italian citizens is above forty-four. At the end of the nineteenth century, the fertility rate per woman . . . . Continue Reading »
The multiverse is upon us! Everywhere you turn in popular culture these days, it seems like the world is not enough: From hit TV shows to blockbuster films, plot lines run through multiple parallel realities, a cosmic cornucopia that invites us to feast on “what-ifs” and “if-thens.” . . . . Continue Reading »
Whether we describe our current condition in terms of postmodernism, neoliberalism, or globalization, the core problem is the loosening of traditional social bonds and institutions. The impact of social media and the transformation of the public sphere by the internet have surely accelerated this . . . . Continue Reading »
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