With experience at every level of church governance and familiarity with how to build and use power, Leo XIV has the potential to be profoundly consequential.
Books
Posted inFaith and Reason
A.I., Dostoevsky and the very human fear of freedom
The danger is not that A.I. will ever “replace” human intelligence but that we will welcome its rule.
Posted inShort Take
What Christians lose when we stop reading
What happens to the church when the people of the book no longer choose to read? We ignore this question at our own peril.
Posted inCatholic Book Club
‘Very casually Catholic’ White Sox owner Bill Veeck would have loved ‘pope hat’ night
Known for his quixotic ballpark gimmicks and unique promotions, Bill Veeck was also an advocate for racial integration and a generous Catholic philanthropist.
Posted inCatholic Movie Club
Cherishing truth amid lies: Peter Bogdanovich’s ‘Paper Moon’
Nearly everyone we meet in “Paper Moon” is running some sort of scam. With the truth so clouded in uncertainty, our protagonists (and the audience) have to choose who and what to believe.
Posted inBooks
Moderates and liberals stopped going to church. We’re only beginning to see the effects.
In ‘The Vanishing Church,’ Ryan Burge presents a data-driven picture of how the American religious and political landscapes have transformed together over the past 50 years.
Posted inCatholic Book Club
Lessons from the Berlin Wall for Trump’s America: You can’t keep people in (or out) forever.
65 years ago, the Berlin Wall divided that city in two and became an enduring symbol of the Cold War. But do walls really ever work?
Posted inBooks
Review: Michael Mewshaw’s latest novel dwells in darkness—but offers a way out.
Readers of ‘Not Heaven But Paradise’ may feel like they have been through the hell of our contemporary world and also seen the only way out of the darkness.
Posted inCatholic Book Club
James T. Farrell was condemned by the church—and paved the way for American Catholic writers
James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan trilogy in the 1930s set him up as an enemy of a church that was aghast at his portrayal of human nature and, frankly, of the Catholic Church itself.
Posted inFaith and Reason
Thomas Merton: Monk. Mystic. Existentialist?
A lifetime of re-reading Merton has convinced me that the existential note ringing through his body of work is key, not only to making sense of his wide-ranging thought, but to any real understanding of the man himself.