My American Idol

It’s a weird thing to do, but I have to start this post on the evil of idols by talking about my idol. Her name is Elizabeth Scalia. She’ll hate that. She can’t stand it when people make a fuss over her. And she’ll be the first to tell you she’s a miserable, worthless, slobbering [...]

“A Light That Is Well Placed Does Not Repel Others…”

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about Strange Gods, the first book by our own Elizabeth Scalia.  (I’m working my way through it now and hope to write about it in the next few days; I can report that my wife, who rarely reads anything other than her Bible, read the book in one [...]

“The Great Gatsby” as sermon

From the canny mind of Fr. Robert Barron:  Fitzgerald saw that, given the breakdown of traditional morality and the marginalization of God, many people in the postwar West simply surrendered themselves to wealth and pleasure. Commitment, marriage, sexual responsibility, and the cultivation of a spiritual life were seen as, at best, holdovers from the Victorian [...]

“Gatsby,” great and otherwise

With all the attention being lavished on the new adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” I was reminded of a visit I paid to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s grave a couple years ago — and my bemusement at finding there a bottle, a glass and a book (see above.) The grave, at St. Marcy’s Catholic Church in [...]

“Hungry” gets a little buzz

A few weeks back, I posted on the collection of homilies to which I contributed, “Hungry and You Fed Me.”  Now, The Times of Trenton has written about it, plugging an upcoming book signing (I’ll be there, so if you’re in New Jersey, come on by and say hello!): Fifteen homilists of various Christian denominations [...]

From the land that gave us Shakespeare…

…comes this: EL James’s best seller Fifty Shades of Grey has been named popular fiction book of the year at the Specsavers National Book Awards in London.

Meet the deacon novelist

Details, from Arkansas Catholic: In “I Hear Your Heartbeat” Deacon Larry Hatch’s recently released first novel, the reader is reminded that to receive forgiveness, one must first be willing to forgive. “Unforgiveness is the poison you drink hoping the other person will die,” said Hatch, who serves St. Agnes Church in Mena. The story follows [...]

“Same Call, Different Men”

This sounds like something to put on my “must-read” list.  From U.S. Catholic:  Same Call, Different Men: The Evolution of the Priesthood Since Vatican II presents a comprehensive portrait of the Catholic priesthood in the United States today based on sociological data on 960 priests and interviews with 60 others, both collected in 2009. First the [...]

Great Scott: a visit to Fitzgerald’s grave

With some time to kill this weekend, my wife and I decided to pay a nostalgic visit to St. Mary’s in Rockville, Maryland, the chapel where we were married 25 years ago. Afterward, we dropped by the graveyard next door to pay our respects to its most famous residents, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. This is [...]

For the feast of St. Francis: a "forest of Junipers"

From Fr. James Martin’s new book, “Between Heaven and Mirth,” comes this delightful anecdote about one of Francis’s most enthusiastic followers: Perhaps the most enjoyable of all the tales in the Franciscan annals concern the lovable Brother Juniper, whose lavish generosity constantly exasperated his Franciscan brothers.  Juniper, one of the early companions of Francis, thought [...]