Bishop Robert Barron
Having patience for the sausage-making Synod
The midterm report on the deliberations of the Synod on the Family has appeared and there is a fair amount... Read more
Revisiting the Argument from Motion
One of the unintended but happy consequences of the emergence of the new atheism is a renewed interest in the... Read more
The Parable of the Talents
The attendance at our daily Mundelein Seminary on Labor Day weekend was sparse. Many of the students had gone home... Read more
'The Giver' and the fading memory of Christianity
Lois Lowry’s 1993 novel The Giver has garnered a very wide audience over the past two decades, since it has... Read more
Why I love my invisible friend
One of the favorite taunts of the New Atheists is that religious people believe in an “invisible friend.” They are... Read more
'The Fault in Our Stars' and the Sacred Heart of Jesus
John Green’s novel The Fault in Our Stars has proven to be wildly popular among young adults in the English... Read more
Bill Maher and not understanding either faith or the Bible
I don’t know what possesses me to watch “Real Time With Bill Maher,” for Maher is, without a doubt, the... Read more
The danger of soft atheism
A very instructive exchange between Gary Gutting, a philosophy professor at Notre Dame, and Philip Kitcher, a philosophy professor at... Read more
What Easter means
In first century Judaism, there were many views concerning what happened to people after they died. Following a very venerable... Read more
Why Jesus is God: A Response to Bart Ehrman
Well, it’s Easter time, and that means that the mainstream media and publishing houses can be counted upon to issue... Read more
Noah: A Post-Modern Midrash
Darren Aronofsky’s cinematic re-telling of the story of Noah has certainly stirred people up. While quite a few reviewers, both... Read more
'Cosmos' and one more telling of the tired myth
Seth MacFarlane, well known atheist and cartoonist, is the executive producer of the remake of “Cosmos,” which recently made its... Read more
A Message in Blood: ISIS and the Meaning of the Cross
Last week, the attention of the world was riveted to a deserted beach in northern Libya, where a group of... Read more
'Priest, Prophet and King'
A classic characterization of Jesus is that he is priest, prophet, and king. As priest, he sanctifies, that is to... Read more
Extreme demand, extreme mercy: the Catholic approach to morality
The Catholic Church is often criticized as rigorist, unrealistic, and unbending, especially in regard to its teaching on sexuality. How... Read more
The adventure of classical morality
One of the most significant fault lines in Western culture opened up in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when what... Read more
'Gay marriage' and the breakdown of moral argument
In his classic text After Virtue, the philosopher Alisdair MacIntyre lamented, not so much the immorality that runs rampant in... Read more
The new Francis
I had an excellent vantage point for the presentation of Pope Francis to the world, for I was doing commentary... Read more
Garry Wills agonistes
The hermeneutical key to Garry Wills’s preposterous book "Why Priests? A Failed Tradition" can be found in the second chapter,... Read more
To evangelize through beauty
In his masterpiece Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh implicitly lays out a program of evangelization that has particular relevance to our... Read more
