The question of married priests is primarily a Christological and ecclesiological one. But it has important practical and pastoral aspects, as well. Many claim that eliminating the celibacy requirement would increase the supply of priests, thereby increasing the pastoral capacity of the Church. This . . . . Continue Reading »
A few years ago, I visited Albi, a small town in southern France famed for its Cathedral of Saint Cecilia. Constructed of the rose-colored brick typical of the region, the building was begun in the thirteenth century, about a hundred years after the Albigensian Crusade against the region’s . . . . Continue Reading »
In the late sixth century, the monk John Moschos called the Judean Desert a “spiritual meadow,” one blossoming with men and women seeking God alone. Fourteen centuries later, William Dalrymple retraced Moschos’s footsteps in From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the . . . . Continue Reading »
Among Christians, anger is one of the seven deadly sins. For Jews, too, it is a major vice. Contemporary secular culture also takes a negative view. It commonly views anger as something to be controlled if not extirpated, if only because it disrupts social life and interferes with the smooth . . . . Continue Reading »
Edmund Campion (1540–81) and Elizabeth Anscombe (1919–2001) were among the most brilliant of their generations of Oxford students: he at St. John’s College, she at St. Hugh’s. Later, each held fellowships in the university and delivered sermons in the university church of St. Mary the . . . . Continue Reading »
In his wonderful book Land of Lincoln, Andrew Ferguson recalls meeting an immigrant family from Thailand who ran a restaurant in Chicago just a few blocks from the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood where I grew up. This couple, Oscar Esche and his wife, had developed a passionate devotion to . . . . Continue Reading »
Of the making of Bibles, it seems, there is no end. When I was growing up in the eighties and nineties, there were three dominant translations: Mainline Protestants had the Revised Standard Version (the major American Bible in the Tyndale–King James tradition), and then the . . . . Continue Reading »
Athanasius, the heroic bishop of Alexandria in the mid-fourth century—who was sent into exile five times—is best known for his defense of the creed of the Council of Nicaea (325 a.d.) against its Arian detractors. The three-volume treatise Against the Arians is his most . . . . Continue Reading »
For many years, apart from sporadic eruptions in American society, the issue of race has played Banquo’s ghost at the American evangelical banquet: an unsettling, unwelcome, somewhat passive guest. But recent trends in American public opinion, fueled by reports of police violence, have made race . . . . Continue Reading »
Populism is a threat to democracy.” “Trump is an authoritarian.” “Trump subverts constitutional norms.” Claims such as these puzzled me when I first heard them four years ago. Trump always struck me as a political freelancer and Twitter provocateur, not a potential dictator commanding . . . . Continue Reading »
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