Elizabeth Scalia

That my mother hated Jews was clear, although why she hated them was one of those shameful mysteries I doubt she could have explained had I asked her. What I heard, growing up, sounded like jealousy and resentment. As a waitress in a catering hall, she would serve at Bar Mitzvah receptions and then come home seething about the amounts of money she imagined the young guest of honor had taken in. Continue Reading »

To be ripped from our neighborhood, the ancient land we have shared, so companionably for so long, is a tragedy that must transform each of us. I have been forever changed by the experience of being marched away at gunpoint, empty-handed, my past wrested from me. They gave me two choices, leave or die. And you, too, are changed for having to quietly watch me go, or die yourselves. It is not how old neighbors should part. Continue Reading »

Readers of a certain age may remember a television commercial about a boy, a bottle of ketchup, and a hamburger: In alternating close-ups, viewers witnessed the condiment’s slow descent and the boy’s ever-heightening expectancy, all while Carly Simon’s “Anticipation” blared seductively in the background. The ketchup poured; the burger was put to the bite: “Worth the wait,” we were told. Continue Reading »

Early last week, there was a terrible accident. A young mother, driving on icy Wyoming roads, lost control of her car, and two of her three children became lost to heaven. A photograph of the family in happier days circulated the Internet and brought a stunning sense of pain to perfect . . . . Continue Reading »

Perhaps it is the natural result of social evolution but as a nation, our understanding of what the word “tolerance” means or how it is to be lived has shifted within our moral GPS. We have been detoured away from the broad two-way street called Live and Let Live and are now traveling a . . . . Continue Reading »

Spend time before a crucifix and the major virtues Christ Jesus embodies there are quickly in evidence: love, patience, humility, obedience, and detachment. We might identify as well, the virtue of understanding who and what one is, even (or especially) within one’s obedience. Continue Reading »

My little cousin and I watch as my uncle washes away the blood, and examines the wound. He is making that odd breathless noise—halfway between a gasp of surprise and a sigh of regret—that he always makes when an attack has been thwarted. My uncle, after all, is nearly forty; an old man long past the charms of making his bed upon the chill earth at night; disenchanted with stargazing while wolves in the dark distance howl, or creep in silence, just beyond our sight. . . . Continue Reading »

With only 266 popes named over two thousand years, the papacy is the most exclusive office on the planet, and—the occasional scoundrel notwithstanding—we Catholics have been mostly well served by our Petrine successors. Particularly during the modern era, in which invention and industry have cooperated in finding new and creative ways to spill unprecedented amounts of human blood, and ancient evils like slavery are put down in one place only to grow like intentional, pernicious viruses somewhere else, our popes have been particularly clear-eyed servants of the servants. . . . Continue Reading »

Amid occasional stories of success (a personal friend who had previously been unable to afford health insurance can now afford a subsidized plan in California) the disastrous launch of the Affordable Care Act has revealed itself to be life-upending disaster for millions who are discovering that—thanks to the narrowest, and thus most easily negated of “Grandfathering” provisions—policy holders who liked their insurance cannot keep their insurance. If they like their doctors and hospitals, they cannot keep their doctors and hospitals, either. . . . Continue Reading »

Meandering through a social media timeline, I stumbled upon one of those “listicles” that comprise so much of our empty internet clicking. This one was about how the adorableness of children should inspire everyone to be a parent, and the images were pretty cute, but my favorite bit was textual … Continue Reading »