We never admitted that the lake was terrifying, that it was a dark, alluring, fearful hole in the world, more grim than serene. We never said the word “drown."
Online media in the wake of tragedy could be doing something good. It may be a modern means of activating an ancient genre: a particular subset of human sorrow.
Waiting while depressed is like being anywhere but the present, pulled toward the past and future by anxiety. Silent waiting tries to do something different.
In the aftermath of events like Orlando, it seems as though the God of Jacob does not perceive, and it is no impiety to say so. But that is not the end of the story.
Early stories of Jews, Christians, and Muslims; the politics of celibacy and marriage; reflections from Cardinal Kasper; afterlife and wealth in early Christianity.
When Pope Francis issued a formal “bull” instituting the current Year of Mercy, he included in its appendix a lengthy informal interview with an Italian journalist.
Award-winning novelist C. E. Morgan talks about "moral beauty," evil and empathy, and how landscape informs her work, including her latest, "The Sport of Kings."
When Georges Vanier said he was going to become a Trappist, his father asked what his friends’ reactions would be. "They'll think I'm a crackpot," Vanier answered.
Marsden’s “biography of a book” traces the development of 'Mere Christianity' from a series of BBC radio talks into a religious "antidote for the attention to self."
A full-length biography was on the minds of neither the author nor the subject met. But Roberts asked Chittister about her personal life. They began at the beginning
Simon Leys’s Catholic sensibility is never insistent, and never descends into preachiness. As he said of Confucius, sometimes it can be better to stay silent.
Francis regards the sacrament's indissolubility as a “gift” rather than a “yoke,” and chides those whose efforts to defend marriage reduce the gift to a “duty.”
Slots, video poker, and other gambling machines are often described as games, but they're a sinful rejection of the goodness of the world and a failure to rejoice.
After he died a bunch of us were playing basketball one night, in one of the parks where we used to play summer-league ball—eight of us. And then this thing happened
My mother was like a hermit crab who was busy moving out of its shell, and then only the shell was left. “Enjoy it, dear,” she said. She took to staring at the sky.
How to describe the almost-madness of loss? Macdonald uses hawk-taming, Smith "ordinary" poetry about death, and Chapman "Christian love of existence."
Mathewes-Green, a convert from the Episcopal tradition, focuses on Orthodoxy as a path to God and uses the actions and prayers of the liturgy as a basis for theology
Mighty planet Earth / orbits to order, its greenest blues / attractive, to make our / life-giving aerial envelope / lawful, obedient, singing. / It turns...
Bruce Chatwin casts travel as an act of sacrifice, of “sloughing-off” the world and discovering the self anew. His work contains moments of aching spirituality.
Pope Francis commissions specially selected "Missionaries of Mercy" for Holy Year while record numbers of Italian Catholics are seeking "annulments" of their baptism
"Metaphysics." The word unexpectedly provided me with new reflections on the deepest meaning of the birth of Jesus and the Incarnation—the seen and the unseen.
For the men I met with for a biweekly seminar at a mid-level security prison, the biblical struggle with Satan is an everyday affair, expressed in just those terms.
Vatican confirms details of Francis's trip to Mexico; Francesca Chaouqui claims some cardinals want the pope dead; and globalization brings Christmas trees to Rome.
People with disabilities present us with a mystery, Jean Vanier once explained; they are the very presence of Jesus. There is something particular in their kindness.
Pope Francis opened the Jubilee Year of Mercy heralding "mercy before judgment" in the spirit of Vatican II. But did the liturgy symbolically contradict the message?
The importance of loving care for persons near the end of life is fundamental in Catholic teaching. But we've embraced a version of love without that obligation.
John Boyne’s new novel pays attention to the circumstances of priestly life in real-world Catholic Ireland, asking: How does one be a good priest under suspicion?
Anahid Nersessian argues that Romanticism dramatizes the “desirability of constraint.” Her book on how British Romantics imagined "utopia" powerfully does the same.
If today the world and the self are devalued, as Walker Percy has suggested, art—particularly the novel— can awaken the reader to their recovery from '4 p.m. blues.'
The church historically has not been kind to the idea of universal salvation. But there have always been theologians who dared to hope that hell would remain empty.
“the quality of mercy” / is a fierce and terrible beauty.../ it hungers in its waiting / then consumes our darkest brokenness / even as it invites us to its table...
