Where a Roman Catholic deacon ponders the world
Some days back, I wrote about the Fitzgerald grave, which rests just outside the church where I was married 27 years ago. The Washington Post recently revisited the churchyard, and offers more about the fabled author’s final resting place: Things have changed for Scott and Zelda. “We usually see a handful of people visiting the cemetery [...]
The Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic takes note of recent papal news, waxes nostalgically about his Catholic upbringing (complete with Dominican nuns) and then concludes: I consider myself Catholic, lock, stock and barrel, with this technical loophole: I cannot believe in God. I refuse to call myself an atheist, however, because that indicates too great a [...]
His planned trilogy on the theological virtues will remain, it seems, incomplete. Catholic News Service has some interesting background: In December, the Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said that Pope Benedict’s fourth encyclical would be released in the first half of 2013. Treating the subject of faith, the encyclical would complete a trilogy on [...]
“When God the Creator made all things, he commanded the plants to bring forth fruit each according to its own kind; he has likewise commanded Christians, who are the living plants of his Church, to bring forth the fruits of devotion, each one in accord with his character, his station and his calling. I say [...]
As I mentioned, the movie of “Les Miserables” is teeming with Catholic references. It lead me to wonder about the background of the novel’s author, Victor Hugo. From Wikipedia: Hugo’s religious views changed radically over the course of his life. In his youth, he identified himself as a Catholic and professed respect for Church hierarchy [...]
That’s the provocative and sobering question that headlines this essay by Paul Elie in the New York Times Book Review this weekend: If any patch of our culture can be said to be post-Christian, it is literature. Half a century after Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, Reynolds Price and John Updike presented themselves as novelists with [...]
The story behind the most famous Christmas story since the Nativity, from the Capitol Hill Times: When Charles Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol” in 1842, the holiday was nearly dead in modern England. Christmas was celebrated by the rural and poor, but frowned upon by employers. It took an American, Washington Irving, to praise Christmas [...]
Check it out: The 18th edition of the venerable reference work has just been released, the first for the electronic age and a chance to take in some of the new faces, events and catchphrases of the past 10 years. General editor Geoffrey O’Brien says he has expanded upon the trend set by his predecessor, [...]
And the beat goes on. I confess that I haven’t read a lot of Kerouac, and when I did I was in college, using all my free time to stay one step ahead of expulsion (my grades were terrible) and trying much too hard to be the next F. Scott Fitzgerald. (Caffeine, not gin, was [...]
When my worlds collide: a former colleague of mine from CBS News, Bob Faw, profiles Catholic writer and deacon, Ron Hansen for the fine PBS program “Religion & Ethics Newsweekly.” It’s superb. Just watch. Watch Catholic Writer Ron Hansen on PBS. See more from Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.
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