There wasn’t a cloud in the blue sky as my friend and I drove on the highway. She was taking me to see the ocean for the first time, the Jersey Shore. We had forgotten to grab CDs for the trip (and iPods still weren’t very widespread; plus, her stereo system didn’t have an auxiliary jack anyway) and realized we had, in fact, brought only one—Counting Crows’s August and Everything After. Though some of Counting Crows’s songs were... Read more
Good men, I’m guessing you have at least one friend in your life who frequently complains about women—or a specific woman—who won’t return his affections. Perhaps he complains about all the women who ignore him, who are holding out on him, who only seem interested in a certain kind of other guy. Basically, your friend constantly talks about women in a negative way. And it probably makes you a little uncomfortable, yeah? Good. That’s healthy, and it’s a... Read more
How can the baptized claim to welcome Christ if they close the door to the foreigner who comes knocking? “If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” (1 Jn 3:17). -Pope St. John Paul II in his Message of the Holy Father for the World Migration Day 2000 I’ve been gone for a while, as a peek at my sorry blog archive will... Read more
“No, sweetie, I’m sure that she doesn’t want your shoe.” The toddler sitting behind me looks unimpressed at her mother, and I am trying not to giggle. For years and years, I have listened to the same spiel about coming to God like little children. I can almost see the Gerber baby picture as they start talking about beautiful children who are sweet and precious. They talk about the absolute innocence of children. The childlike awe. The childlike grace.... Read more
Image Source: walknboston on flickr Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing... Read more
Several weeks ago, I read a question-and-answer column in our local Catholic newspaper (or newsletter as I believe Catholic newspapers should more accurately be called) that explained to a curious soul that taking Communion “signifies that the recipient is a member of the wider Catholic community, united with the bishop of the local church and with the pope.” My initial response was incredulity and then loathing rejection of his answer. In high school, I studied the Baltimore... Read more
What comes to your mind when you hear the phrase “Traditional Femininity”? Maybe it’s Doris Day’s 1960’s thirty-year-old chic, innocent but not naive radiance in career sheaths and adorable pillbox hat and gloves? Maybe it’s the 1950’s serene Grace Kelly with her elegant Dior or Helene Rose full-skirted gowns, heels, pearls or diamonds, sunglasses, and driving gloves. Or maybe it’s earlier. Like the 1940’s luminous Donna Reed in the more structured, Spartan wartime dress. Or 1930’s Ginger Rogers’s... Read more
As you may or may not have noticed, I was on a lengthy sabbatical over the past two weeks. Well, to quote an eloquent British man, “I’m not dead yet!” This past Saturday I graduated from Franciscan University of Steubenville with my Bachelor of Arts degree in English with a concentration in writing and a Spanish minor. I completed the Honors Great Books Program, I was inducted into Alpha Chi (national college honor society), Sigma Tau Delta... Read more
The Washington Examiner recently published a piece on the recent controversy over the failure of administrators at conservative Catholic colleges to respond to victims of sexual assault. The main contention of its author Jeremiah Poff (a current student at Franciscan University of Steubenville) is that such “devoutly Catholic institutions” have not neglected to address the problem of sexual assault, but are rather “on the front lines of preventing such behaviors.” In abstract, his argument is rather straightforward: P1... Read more
I’ve been recently privileged to grow close to Franciscan University alumna Theresa Williams. She wrote a stunning guest contribution for The Shoeless Banshee a few weeks ago, and we have bonded over our mutual love of our Faith and of writing. A few days ago, Theresa informed me that she and her co-authors of the “Concerned Alumnae Letter regarding the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life” (which I signed and endorsed) were writing a statement to clarify recent... Read more
The Shoeless Banshee: Meanderings Beyond the Pale
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