Dante’s ugly, shapeshifting demon, Geryon, is all around us, covering his rage with a facade of love, compassion, and concern. He is also within us. And this is a truth we must bring to light, because, without it, we cannot really understand the depth and grim reality of the Christian faith. “Behold the beast with [...]
Perhaps Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" is really just a mess. For all his brilliance, the Bard stitched together four different plots, threw it all together, writing for the actors he had on hand, and the result is a hodgepodge of a play. If it is a comedy, then is it simply a comedy of errors? [...]
Why do so many Americans doubt the coronavirus? I think there are both admirable and repugnant traits within the American character that help to explain the phenomenon. I don’t believe I am wrong in my observation that many of my fellow conservatives come across as “coronavirus doubters.” Someone has coined a clumsy phrase, “Coronavirus Truthers,” [...]
When this pandemic is over, I’m not so sure that we will go back to life as it was before. There is no going back. Overall, I predict the sobering of America and a new seriousness in our approach to life. Most of all, I expect there to be a religious re-awakening. When the coronavirus [...]
If we make the most of the coronavirus lockdown, we will take time to assess our whole lives. The crisis could awaken all of us and be the tipping point for a major reversal in the world’s moral and spiritual decadence. I was first introduced to the riches of Benedictine spirituality when a kind Catholic [...]
There is good news about the coronavirus. Although there is a good bit of uncertainty, the predominant trend is that the virus is not the killer plague so many are worried about. The Center for Disease Control has issued a simple fact sheet, which includes this statement: What we do know about the virus is [...]
Like a queen who rides a bicycle, Tom Holland’s “Dominion” is both majestic and down-to-earth. From antiquity to modernity, Mr. Holland traces a sneaky thesis that Christianity has changed the world—transforming it from the inside out. Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, by Tom Holland (624 pages, Basic Books, 2019) Every once in [...]
There are dark corners to be explored in a great church. Instead of vast seating space, bright with electric light, huge speakers hanging from the beams, and padded pews, give me the darkened chapel where ancient monks recited their daily prayers. Give me the dark corner of a crumbling cloister, the dark corner of a [...]
The highlight of a pilgrimage to Rome is to join Liz Lev for one of her increasingly famous tours of the Vatican Museums. Her high-energy presentation, vast knowledge, and enthusiasm are matched by her warm welcome, sense of humor, and genuine faith. […]
Martin Scorsese is a master filmmaker. Believing a film can be an art form on a level with music, dance, and literature, the one-time seminarian director wrestles with themes of free will and the unforeseen consequences of sin in his latest work, “The Irishman.” Martin Scorsese recently criticized Hollywood’s current cash cow—the comic book superhero [...]
Glenn Arbery, in “Bearings and Distances,” uses bizarre humor, well-drawn characters, a wider landscape, and unexpected twists to expand the reach of Southern Gothic to critique more widespread contagions of modernity: the superficiality of academia, the hypocrisy of conventional religion, the sour legacy of slavery, the suffocating spiral of promiscuity, and the terror of a [...]
The Christian Church’s ongoing struggle with modernity is unavoidable. How does a two-thousand-year-old religion, with roots even further into antiquity, adapt to a world not only technologically astonishing, but philosophically post-Christian, totally materialistic, and indifferent towards God? George Weigel answers this question in “The Irony of Modern Catholic History.” The Irony of Modern Catholic History: [...]
Signs within the developing culture from the 1950s indicated, even then, a new confusion about sexual identity. From the dawn of time a man was defined as a father, or potential father. A woman was a mother, or potential mother. The whole delicate dance of courtship and sexual relationships circled around the undeniable link between [...]
We are all fascinated by the future and imprisoned by the past—especially when “there is distress of nations and perplexity”—but we needn’t resort to occult tomfoolery or fall under the spell of a seer, preacher, or latter-day doomsday prophet. Instead the answer is to dwell in the present moment. The preachers of my Evangelical youth [...]