He has authored over a dozen books, written a syndicated newspaper column and countless essays and articles covering a broad range of subjects—sports, politics, mobsters, union thugs, cultural touchstones, booze, and blades of grass—all of it written in a smart, literate voice of the casual sophisticate who takes his subject, but not himself, seriously. Continue Reading »
“Do you really think ‘anti-apologism’ is a problem?” wrote my friend Mark Barrett in response to last week’s column, “The Reasons the Heart Wants,” which tried to defend the craft of expositing the Faith against the claim that’s it’s pointless if not counter-productive. He was thinking of Catholics, while I had been thinking more of hip, postmodern Evangelicals … Continue Reading»
Bright young ladies, both excellent students at their respective excellent schools, my seventh grade catechism students pay attention, ask good questions, and remember interesting little facts like “Hildegard of Bingen was a twelfth century mystic and writer.” But even I was surprised when they told me they completely understand the Incarnation… . Continue Reading »
A favorite parlor game of mine is to ask literary-minded friends to name important works of fiction which not only have mothers as primary characters, but feature rich explorations of motherhood. If the topic were otherwise”What works from the canon feature meditations on death? Explorations of romantic love? Or even fatherhood? … Continue Reading »
As readers will have seen, the Board of the Institute on Religion and Public life has appointed me the next editor of First Things. I’ll be working under Jim Neuchterlein over the next couple of months, trying to soak up as much of his editorial wisdom as possible before taking over on April 1st. These new responsibilities mean that this will be my last Thursday column… . Continue Reading »
Near the top of the list of hoary writer’s formats, just below the open letters and pseudo-Swiftian “modest proposals”, sits the “Letter to a Young ________” format. The template is flexible enough that it can be used to condescend to any group that is more unseasoned than the author. There are letters to young poets and young priests, letters to young Catholics and young Calvinists, and letters to young mothers and young brothers… . Continue Reading »
Catholics once had an intuitive understanding of sacred space: To enter a church, especially in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, was to enter a different kind of environment, one of the hallmarks of which was a reverent silence. Some of that intuition remains… . Continue Reading »
It’s that time of year, when celebrities and artists engage in self-promotional campaigning and play dress-up in hopes of snaring a nomination for a critic’s award or a guild award or an “arts and sciences” trophy celebrating their excellence, and the rest of us watch them do it. We watch them for the fashions and for the foibles … Continue Reading »
The main character was the usual tortured ex-CIA agent, already a cliché when the show aired twenty-five years ago, a man haunted by his past and trying to find peace by using his skills to help the weak being victimized by the strong. More likely to be found in real life than the lead of The Equalizer, I think, was the lead in a Schwarzenegger movie who, when his wife finds out he’s a spy and yells “You kill people!”, replies, “Yes, but dey were all verry bahd.” … Continue Reading »
The February issue is here! And not a moment too soon. First thing first, we have James Nuechterlein’s timely Public Square column in which he traces the few successes and many failures of America’s attempts to solve its racial problems… . Continue Reading »
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