It has been a while since I posted, and I suspect some of you think that I had abandoned the blog. This is true, but not in the way you think. Something went awry back in March, and I have in fact been hiding from Vox Nova since then. As you will recall, I was attempting to blog weekly, posting a homily on the Sunday readings. It was touch and go for while as I was falling behind, and then... Read more
¨Raised to the heavens, Mary remains for the human race an unconquered rampart, interceding for us before her Son and God.¨ – Theoteknos of Linas, 7th Century Today I had the opportunity to visit Maria, Mater Misericordiae, an amazing art exhibition at the Muzeum Narodowy (National Museum) in Krakow. Planned in conjunction with World Youth Day and the Jubilee Year of Mercy, this special display showcases an eclectic assortment of medieval and early modern art collected from around Europe. The... Read more
…that fits the present moment especially well, but could be profitably used at any time. (Via Mark Shea) Read more
What if enmity itself is our foe? What if love is why we are here? What if victory means reconciliation? What if God made us for each other? What if there is no “them” but only “us?” Read more
It was July 2002. I stared out the window in amazement as the airplane began its descent. Green, so much green. As far as the eye could see, there were hills, forests, rolling farmland. My heart raced with excitement. At 19 I was taking my first trip outside North America to a place I had always dreamed of visiting: Kraków, Poland. I would spend the next four weeks studying the language of my ancestors and immersing myself in a thousand-year-old... Read more
Having previously interacted with Daniel Schwindt via Solidarity Hall (for which he edited the Radically Catholic anthology I was proud to be a part of), and followed his writing on their blog and on Ethika Politika, I knew his thinking defied easy categorization, especially within the political vocabulary of the day. Even in areas of divergence, I’ve known him and other “solidarians” to be of the sort with whom one can not only civilly but fruitfully disagree. So I received a... Read more
It’s an easy temptation, wherever the false doctrine of exceptionalism is rife, to treat national holidays as liturgical ones, especially when they happen to occur in proximity. So let us be reminded: today, the universal Church celebrates the feast of the body and blood of Christ. Not anything else. The universality of the Church’s feasts, and of the Eucharist itself, is a necessary guard against the imperial tendency to think ourselves the center of the world, including the Church. Various... Read more
The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of much of our lives become apparent. Trivia dominates our conversations and increasingly our airwaves. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble.... Read more
A recent NPR story on pre-natal detection of the effects of the Zika virus caught my attention a couple of weeks ago. Although I was alerted by the foreboding reference to the mother’s loss in the teaser that appeared in my email inbox, the following two sentences still hit me in the gut: The woman decided to terminate the pregnancy. And she allowed [OB-GYN] Driggers and her colleagues to study the baby. I had to stop and read those two sentences over, slowly. I know... Read more
Yes, Pope Francis’ highly anticipated post-synodal exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, was released on Friday. As has become the norm, news outlets and social media have been buzzing with reactions, pre-reactions, reactions to the reactions, and on and on. All these are fed through the speaker’s preferred narrative and thus vary depending, to name the most sweeping divides, on whether we claim that this document changes nothing or that it changes everything, and on whether we view either of the above as a... Read more
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