“First Presidency Offers Condolences on Passing of His Holiness Pope Francis” As the First Presidency has already done, I offer my condolences on the death of Pope Francis to any Catholic readers who may perhaps wander through here. The Pope’s passing comes as a surprise to many, including me, because he seemed to be recovering reasonably well from a lengthy and serious hospitalization a few weeks ago. Just yesterday, he both appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s... Read more
A traditional greeting is given on Easter Sunday (beginning at midnight and continuing throughout the day) across much of the Eastern Christian world. It is often expressed in Greek, but often, too, in whatever the actual local language happens to be. In Greek, it goes like this: Χριστὸς ἀνέστη! Christos Anesti (in modern Greek pronunciation) Christ is risen! To which the traditional response is Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! Alithos Anesti (in modern Greek pronunciation) Truly, he is risen! He is risen.... Read more
I intended to do more than I have, both here on this blog and personally, with Holy Week or Passion Week — the term passion refers not to emotions in our modern sense, but to Christ’s suffering — which began last weekend on Palm Sunday. I’ll try to make up for it, at least a little bit, today and tomorrow. This has been a very hectic week. Precisely as I wasn’t hoping it to be. On Thursday, I said... Read more
Many years ago, not long after our launch, Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship began to commission a special article for publication every year at Christmas time and at Easter — or, more accurately in the latter case, to appear annually on Good Friday. Today is Good Friday, and here is a link to the Interpreter Foundation’s 2025 Easter article, written by Joseph W. Green and entitled “Easter as Threshold: Trauma, Transformation, and God’s Presence in... Read more
An article reprint — that is, a chapter from an already-published book — has gone up on the website of the Interpreter Foundation. These reprints, which go up on Thursdays, are not to be confused with the articles in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, which go up on Fridays. A few months ago, that difficult distinction left one confused critic very indignant, and I don’t want him to have that embarrassing problem again. So here... Read more
I mentioned this case in my immediately prior post, but I regard it as such a manifest outrage that I’m going to mention it again — and I’m going to encourage you to write your senator and your congressman about it: “BYU Ph.D. student’s international student visa revoked over apparent fishing license violation: Husband and father of 5 may have to return to Japan unless the courts allow him to continue his graduate studies” In order to make contacting your... Read more
A horrific judicial decision has just emerged out of the United Kingdom: “U.K. Supreme Court issues unanimous ruling on the definition of ‘woman’: The ruling is a significant development in the country’s ongoing debate over transgender issues.” If this sort of thing goes much further, some people will begin to imagine that reality and biology are real and that words have determinate meaning. And to think that such things are happening in the land of Lewis Carroll! “I don’t... Read more
Many, many years ago — probably in 1979, or maybe in 1980 — my wife and I took a trip during Christmas vacation from Cairo, Egypt, to Nairobi, Kenya. It remains one of my favorite trips of all time. It was astoundingly cheap — as the result of some sort of special deal for American educators (for which we qualified because my wife was on the teaching faculty at Cairo American College) — and, relatively impoverished though we were... Read more
An avid anonymous participant over at the Peterson Obsession Board who calls himself something like Everybody’s WC has, for years, specialized in manufacturing fictional stories designed to illustrate my depraved buffoonery — stories that he passes off as real. These tales often rest upon information supposedly shared with him by (probably fictional) confidential informants or even, in a few cases, upon his own supposed personal knowledge of me. For reasons known only to him, I’m his favorite single theme... Read more
A passage in the stake president’s remarks at our stake conference this morning got me to thinking along the following lines, closely related to but not identical with the line of thought that he was pursuing: I sometimes hear from former members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and from grace-alone evangelical critics of the Church, that escape from Mormonism often delivers the escapee from the demoralizing sense that he is never good enough, that she... Read more
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