…get a lot of bad press in modern times. In political and academic venues, writers and speakers are chastised for abstracting concrete events or conditions. An example or two may be in order: A political science teacher, or perhaps a history teacher, abstracts an event like war; a student may object to the teacher’s non-mention of [...]
It seems that “cradle” Catholics are more interested in conversion stories than converts are. Perhaps they enjoy the experience of seeing the faith in which they were born and reared affirmed, perhaps it strengthens their own fidelity. As a convert, I’m not as interested, though I have noticed from time to time that initial conversion most [...]
For some reason, it’s in the church parking lot that conversations often become memorable. As I stood by my open car door last Sunday, a deacon’s wife complained to me, in the familiar tones of classic outraged victimhood, that some parishioner had criticized her husband for putting a pro-Biden sign in his front yard. It was [...]
So much of what is happening now in political and public life (and private life too?) reminds me of a story I heard so many years ago that I can’t remember when I first heard it. It sounds a little bit like Little Red Riding Hood at first, but it couldn’t be more different. A young [...]
This may sound incongruous beyond enduring, but, while I never confuse an apple with an orange, it’s true that I make, almost habitually, apparently incongruous connections. For example, Yeats’ poem “For Anne Gregory” and racism. The young woman complains that men should love her for herself alone and not for her yellow hair. While the poem [...]
The time for resolutions, new year’s style, has come round again. I can’t remember when I stopped doing that. It was way back, even before I became a Christian. What’s the point? If there’s something you want to do, do it. If there’s something you don’t want to do, stop doing it. Why is a Resolution necessary? [...]
Some of my earliest memories are those of primitive country people. You might say “superstitious” except that so many of those beliefs have proven true. One of them is an ability to take the heat away from another’s burn. If one of us children burned ourselves, perhaps on a hot kettle, we ran to my grandmother, [...]
At the Religion News website, https://religionnews.com/2021/11/16/in-catholic-italy-de-baptism-is-gaining-popularity/ , there’s a report of a growing number of people in Italy seeking “de-baptism,” a process by which a baptized Catholic removes the record of his baptism. According to the article, the practice is not confined to Italy, but that’s where someone has started counting; there are at least 100,000 de-baptisms so [...]
There is something in people that can only be described as a need to hate. René Girard explicated this need in his scapegoat theory: People find unity in a shared hatred for an appointed scapegoat on whom they can lay their sins (and their blame) for all that is deemed wrong or evil within the group/ tribe/ family/ [...]
You offer your heart, your love, your labor, your time, everything you have. And no one wants it. You, and all that you have to give, are discarded like trash. This happens not just sometimes, but always, both with persons and with groups of all kinds, within your family, at work, in your church. It evolves [...]
