JD Vance’s story suggests he has taken from the church its beauty, its authority and its pedigree but the pews and the people in them he has largely left behind.
Faith
Posted inFaith and Reason
The ‘Manosphere’ and a church against extremes
The church must stop allowing itself to be used as a tool in the Christian nationalist extremist resurgence in the United States today.
Posted inFaith and Reason
Adding a new script to the bro-sphere
How might the church respond to the situation in which we find ourselves? We ought first to see the manosphere for what it is: a group of people who share not an answer but a question. Second, we ought to be in the business of helping to write new social scripts—scripts that make an inclusive masculinity visible and attractive and accomplishable.
Posted inFaith and Reason
How the Catholic Church can address young men’s grievances
Our tradition tells us what God wants for us: a world of relationships and love where we do our best to cooperate with God’s grace as it helps us grow in virtue and holiness. The sugar high of online hate does not hold up against the deep nourishment of love, and it is our job to let adolescents know that there is a healthier diet available to them.
Posted inBooks
Review: Maritain’s artful scholasticism
Jacques Maritain’s thought can be intimidating to anyone without a strong background in theology or philosophy. But ‘The Christian Philosophy of Jacques Maritain’ can be a helpful introduction.
Posted inFeatures
Major-League Mass: When chaplains, players and staff gather for prayer, ballparks become cathedrals.
Masses and other religious services are not what one might expect to find in a baseball stadium—but for many MLB players, they are a Sunday pregame staple.
Posted inFaith and Reason
Faith, morality and the manosphere: A forum on male grievance and belonging
If Christian language, identity and even nationalism are being reshaped in a largely unmoored digital marketplace that blends masculinity, grievance and politics, how should the Catholic Church respond? Four scholars—Patrick Gilger, S.J., Margaret Felice, Susan Bigelow Reynolds and Peter Nguyen, S.J.—offer their reflections.
Posted inFaith and Reason
The ‘Manosphere’ and the formation of moral conscience
The Christian tradition has always affirmed asceticism, discipline and sacrifice. In the secular manosphere, however, these goods are severed from humility or empathy, as well as any sense of communion.
Posted inBooks
Andre Dubus’s ‘A Father’s Story’: a short story with theological heft
For Andre Dubus, writing was a question of deciphering what was happening in the lives of his characters and translating that for others to see and understand—all of which can be seen clearly in “A Father’s Story.”
Posted inShort Take
The Catholic Church has had its own governance failures. How can it weigh in on A.I. regulation?
It is fair to question whether an institution with critical governance failures of its own is well positioned to advise on regulating technology, but a close reading of the encyclical shows that Leo understands these failures.