Last week, after over 50 years of this experience, I was finally given a word that captures what I feel when I see any of the many Laughing Jesus paintings: Cringe.
Arts & Culture
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Walker Percy, master of prose (and king of snark)
The author of “The Moviegoer” and other distinguished novels was also an occasional book reviewer and commentator for America, and his prose in our pages shone as well.
Posted inArts & Culture, Ideas
Our favorite pop culture stories are sacred to us. Have we lost the ability to critique them?
I wonder at the rage we seem to have at the ready when it comes to our favorite pieces of pop culture.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Thomas Merton, unfiltered
Patrick Collins gives a close read of Thomas Merton’s correspondence in “A Focus on Truth: Thomas Merton’s Uncensored Mind.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Television
A seminarian, an agnostic and an atheist walk into an exorcism. Welcome to ‘Evil’ on Paramount+.
Currently in production on its third season, “Evil” is Paramount+’s hidden gem and the next Catholic horror hit fans of “Midnight Mass” have been waiting for.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Suffering, faith and perseverance: Ross Douthat chronicles his struggle with Lyme disease
In “The Deep Places,” Ross Douthat relates how an experience of illness and suffering can lead to a search for answers to more transcendent questions, including the meaning of suffering and the gift of perseverance.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
The Catholic Church is no stranger to banning books—and we know it (almost) always backfires.
The news that Maus, a graphic novel about the Holocaust, had been removed from school curricula was a reminder of one of our nation’s favorite pastimes: book bans.
Posted inArts & Culture, Vantage Point
From 1974: Walker Percy on the humbling, eccentric craft of writing
Walker Percy: “Writing is a craft like any other. Writers and carpenters had better have respect for the workaday tools of the trade, the feel of the wood under the thumb.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Film
Pedro Almodóvar’s ‘Parallel Mothers’ reveals a Catholic veneration for women and motherhood
For the better part of 40 years Pedro Almodóvar has personified both the cinema of Spain and the country’s conflicted relationship with the church.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Marshall McLuhan, the Catholic thinker who predicted the internet, spent his last days praying with a Jesuit
Marshall McLuhan, the pop culture sage of the electronic world, spent the final days of his life with Frank Stroud, S.J.