In my research, I discovered that the shepherds were important to St. Luke for a simple reason: They were the primary eyewitnesses of the events in Bethlehem on the night of Jesus' birth, and they passed down the story through established methods of oral transmission. Earlier this year, I had the privilege of spending a [...]
However one solves the mysterious Sword of Michael, it is a reminder to us in our hi-tech age that our ancestors had perhaps more technologies than our iPhones have dreamt of. They had a mystical understanding of the interactions of heaven and earth that we have lost. The ruins of their monasteries, the relics of [...]
Flannery O’Connor clearly has a soft spot for her Southern religious freaks. She sees in their insanity the germ of genuine belief, and recognizes in them an antidote to the bland, uniform indoctrination into a culture where materialistic atheism is the assumed worldview. In her short stories, and culminating in The Violent Bear It Away—her [...]
In Flannery O’Connor’s "Wise Blood," the Church of preacher Hazel Motes is a Church of Moralistic, Therapeutic Deism. It is a Church Without Christ because no redeemer is needed. Is this not what the majority of twenty-first century Christianity has become? In re-reading Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood I’m struck by the prophetic precision with which [...]
That more faith-based fiction is being published is encouraging. It means the imagination among the faithful is not dying, but thriving, and those of us who are readers should risk the time to read new authors, like the three whose work I review here. Perhaps it is because I am turning my time and talents [...]
Joseph Pearce's collection of conversion stories, "Literary Converts," is not only an inspirational read but also a commentary on the intellectual, spiritual, and literary struggles of the last century, which should inform and enlighten the encroaching darkness of our own times. More than once an enthusiastic religious woman has glided up to me after a [...]
The new religion of optimism has its orthodoxy and its watchdogs. What is perceived as pessimism, negativity, or intolerance is not only eschewed, it is prohibited; and should anyone dare to voice an opinion that seems in any way not to be tender-hearted, tolerant, and brightly optimistic, he will be hounded, howled down, and cancelled. [...]
Myth can be a fantasy tale full of whimsy and phantasmagorical characters, but true myth is much more than that. It is a tale that is true whether it is factual or not, and when it is both factual and true our eyes and hearts are opened to new realities and our quotidian lives are [...]
George Herbert and Nicholas Ferrar illustrate the way forward for Christians in troubled times. They followed the “Benedict Option,” if you like. While their own church and country was torn apart by decades of religious strife, immorality, violence, greed and corruption, they simply got on with living an authentic Christian life. On our recent pilgrimage [...]
What’s the point of the violence and tough talk in Declan Finn’s supernatural detective story? It’s the stuff of every good story: the grueling battle between good and evil. The question is not so much whether there is violence, but how it is treated. Some weeks ago in these pages I wrote asking where Catholic [...]
The reliance on religion, family, and tradition in Middle Eastern culture reveals the ephemeral, individualistic entertainment culture of the United States for the Vanity Fair that it is. Being on sabbatical in Jerusalem for two months has brought about two important perspectives shedding light on Middle Eastern culture and therefore on the culture in the [...]
I needed the time away during my sabbatical, and through a special providence it was allowed for this sabbath to take place in Jerusalem during Holy Week, when the Redemption events are re-lived now two thousand years later in ways more vivid and life-changing than most can imagine. During the pandemic I was informed that, [...]
American mythologist Joseph Campbell’s discernment of the hero’s quest and his distillation of world myth into an easily-digestible template has had a powerful impact on contemporary culture, including influencing George Lucas' "Star Wars" films. The mythologist Joseph Campbell was the grandson of an Irish peasant-immigrant. Brought up in a Catholic home in New York, he [...]
John Cassian's rules for discernment can assist in the problematic process of sifting out false religious teaching and teachers, false ideologies and ideologues, specious political opinions and bogus salesmen, rogues and internet provocateurs. John Cassian, born in the mid-fourth century in what is present-day Romania, exerted a major influence on Western monasticism and therefore on [...]