“Contextuality” (with Apologies to Irving Berlin)

Imagine a friend who is awake whenever you are, never grumpy, and always interested in what interests…

Since the Second Vatican Council, Catholics have known that they can’t accuse Jews of “killing God.” But…

I am not a particularly virtuous person, and I have squandered many gifts and hopes. But one thing…

It is never a wise idea to write about historical events as they unfurl, but with much…

After watching White Christmas with the family for the umpteenth time last December, I was moved, perhaps…

Abortion activists have launched a new strategy in the last remaining pro-life regimes in Europe, creating dangerous…

Lying on his deathbed after two decades of running France, Cardinal Richelieu was asked whether he forgave…

Joyce Carol Oates’s recent broadside on X against Flannery O’Connor’s Catholic faith is less interesting as a…

What does the phrase “disenchantment of the world” mean? Disenchantment is easy to identify and even easier…

On the wedding night of his second marriage, August Strindberg (1849–1912), the Swedish writer, painter, polymath, and…

In the Republic, Plato writes that unless liberated by philosophy, by the awakening of the divine part…

Late in Barack Obama’s presidency, a bitter conflict broke out on the right. Conservative institutions that had…

Ecumenism has, to put it mildly, stalled. Since the beginning of this century, efforts aimed at bringing…

Recent years have seen an explosion in a particular subgenre of sociopolitical commentary. Bonnie Kristian calls it…

This brutal winter, ice, and snow, / deer, once again, assault the holly, …

Be slow to judge, love mercy, persevere, / and let the proud man take for first place…

Wheeling through the clotted earth, / Bronze, bone, and leather clumped in clay…