Did I ever tell you about my friend Lynn Leibovitz We met in Florence I had finished two semesters of theological studies in Rome and after a year of listening to Jesuits lecturing in Italian a year I passed either writing aerograms or crying I decided that I could definitely use more Itali

Profound insights into human life often come when a novelist offers us a scene that is initially hard to imagine at least until we rsquo ve entered it through the writer rsquo s craft Then it suddenly seems patent and true And when the author is a great one the gospel itself is proclaimed beca

Here rsquo s how his first biographer Thomas of Celano records the encounter of St Francis of Assisi with the crucifix now famous but then hanging forlorn in the crumbling Umbrian church of San Damiano He write that Francis was walking one day by the church of San Damiano which was aband

Charles Sumner was a man of vision The senator from Massachusetts knew that slavery was wrong He devoted his fiery oratory to denouncing the profound evil it represented but Charles Sumner lacked a virtue I would call suppleness What is that It rsquo s a combination of the classical virtues It

What will you do when the rapture comes If you aren rsquo t a fundamentalist Christian one who reads the Bible literally you rsquo re probably not preparing to be seized by Christ and taken up into heaven before closing tribulations fall upon the world Of course if the novelist Tom Perotta is

If one has been the victim of a profoundly evil act how does one mdash or rather how should one mdash respond By a profoundly evil act I do not mean that one is simply the recipient of some unkindness that chafes but is quickly healed but truly the recipient of a life-altering injustice so

If one has been the victim of a profoundly evil act how does one mdash or rather how should one mdash respond By a profoundly evil act I do not mean that one is simply the recipient of some unkindness that chafes but is quickly healed but truly the recipient of a life-altering injustice someth

The British philosopher Gillian Rose spent her brief life arguing against a basic presumption of modern life one that goes something like this now that almost everyone can be heard and now that we realize how profoundly we disagree about the most important aspects and values in life let rsquo s

The British philosopher Gillian Rose spent her brief life arguing against a basic presumption of modern life one that goes something like this now that almost everyone can be heard and now that we realize how profoundly we disagree about the most important aspects and values in life let rsquo s

ldquo I need advice about my marriage rdquo nbsp She was certainly direct brushing aside the question I had proffered to open our conversation about her four children all of whom were in our parochial school nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp ldquo Okay Tell me about your marriage rdquo ldquo