“A man will give his life for a mystery, but not for a question mark.” Immediately after Vatican II, the North American College was a house of question marks—and worse-than-question-marks. The Catholic Church in America paid, and is paying, a heavy price for that season of deep confusion. Continue Reading »
Readers of First Thoughts will know by now that Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Silence by Shūsaku Endō was released in select theaters on December 23. The novel warrants the attention it is getting. Set in the 1640s at the end of Japan's “Christian Century” (1549-1639), Silence is a haunting journey through one priest’s struggles to remain faithful in the most challenging of circumstances. Continue Reading »
In Ontario today, doctors who decline to euthanize their patients are required to provide an “effective referral”: They are obliged, on pain of losing their license to practice, to send a troubled patient to a doctor of lighter conscience who will kill that patient. Cardinal Collins is fighting this abomination. Continue Reading »
Shūsaku Endō’s Silence is now widely regarded as a modern classic. The initial reaction of Japanese Catholics, however, was largely hostile. Continue Reading »
If we tried translating Verlaine’s spiritual writing into the language of accompaniment and integration, we would be exchanging great religious art for soulless bureaucratic jargon. Continue Reading »
A seventh-grader recently asked me how to respond to his peer’s obstinate claim that he and the rest of his Catholic co-religionists are just as bad as ISIS. Continue Reading »