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About Dena Hunt

Dena Hunt's first novel, Treason (Sophia Institute Press), won the IPPY Gold Medal. Her second, The Lion’s Heart (Full Quiver Press), won the Catholic Arts and Letters Achievement award. Jazz & Other Stories, her third book, has just been published by Wiseblood Books. She is the book review editor of St. Austin Review.

Abstractions…

2022-04-10T21:40:21-05:00

…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 [...]

Abstractions…2022-04-10T21:40:21-05:00

Converting Converts

2022-03-25T23:28:28-05:00

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 [...]

Converting Converts2022-03-25T23:28:28-05:00

The Church Parking Lot

2022-02-19T16:54:39-06:00

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 [...]

The Church Parking Lot2022-02-19T16:54:39-06:00

The Ungrateful Snake

2022-02-09T02:14:05-06:00

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 [...]

The Ungrateful Snake2022-02-09T02:14:05-06:00

Yellow Hair and Racism

2022-01-25T16:00:59-06:00

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 [...]

Yellow Hair and Racism2022-01-25T16:00:59-06:00

Resolved

2021-12-30T18:29:07-06:00

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? [...]

Resolved2021-12-30T18:29:07-06:00

Taking the Heat

2021-11-29T15:47:39-06:00

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, [...]

Taking the Heat2021-11-29T15:47:39-06:00

De-Baptism

2021-11-19T20:46:35-06:00

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 [...]

De-Baptism2021-11-19T20:46:35-06:00

The Need to Hate

2021-11-03T01:27:00-05:00

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/ [...]

The Need to Hate2021-11-03T01:27:00-05:00

For the Pariah

2021-09-02T16:55:36-05:00

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 [...]

For the Pariah2021-09-02T16:55:36-05:00
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