The prosperity gospel—which declares that God’s grace is manifest in gold faucets, private jets, and multimillion-dollar homes—has no answer for the countless agonies of earthly life. Continue Reading »
Not even your death belongs to you. Your death belongs to Jesus, the Living One who holds the keys of Death and of Hades. Continue Reading »
One of the fascinating revelations of Uncommon Grace is how endearing and childlike O’Connor’s faith was—just as Jesus said the faith of his disciples should be. Continue Reading »
When it comes to the end of life, “moral complexity” tempts us to recast our tendency to shrink from commitment to the truth as a kind of sophistication. Continue Reading »
Last night I watched The Final Girls, Todd Strauss-Schulson's 2015 slasher parody about mourning. It's charming, touching, and mostly successful—and a great example of the reasons 2015 specifically and the '10s generally have been such great years for horror fans.2015 was just a cornucopia of . . . . Continue Reading »
Assisted-suicide advocacy is wrapped in euphemisms and false assurances. We are often told that medicalized killing will be “a last resort” reserved for the terminally ill, to be deployed only in the context of a long-term relationship with a caring doctor and, even then, strictly when there is . . . . Continue Reading »
I am glad you feel you are ‘standing still’ in your spiritual life. I should be still better pleased if you felt you were losing ground! Whatever makes for humility is so much to the good.”
Last Thursday morning, I was teaching a freshman honors seminar in Newberg, Oregon. We were discussing Genesis 32, that enigmatic passage where Jacob wrestles with God. Just south of us, in Roseburg, Oregon, my students’ counterparts were being murdered in their writing classroom. In another of . . . . Continue Reading »
Disability, Providence, and Ethics: Bridging Gaps, Transforming Lives by hans s. reinders baylor, 248 pages, $49.95 What sort of world do we live in? Is it a world of chance and fortune without meaning? When bad things happen, an accident or an illness, is it only bad luck? Or is there a . . . . Continue Reading »
A lighter piece: Can strong faith make you more humorous? Though I disagree with Kerry Trotter about her (admittedly biased) speculation that perhaps Catholics understand humor best of all because they have “suffered better than anyone,” her example of St. Lawrence does shed light on a . . . . Continue Reading »
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