Protection of Minors Commission asks Synod to dedicate time to safeguarding issues
Ahead of the upcoming Synod on Synodality this October in the Vatican, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors appeals for safeguarding children to be seriously and frequently deliberated throughout the Synod’s discussions. Read all
Junk DNA
Junk DNA By John W. Farrell September 25, 2023 In 1979, a biology professor at the University of California Berkeley named Thomas Jukes wrote to Francis Crick, the Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of the helical structure of DNA: Dear Francis, I am sure that you realize how frightfully angry a lot of people will be […]
Experiencing the Paschal Mystery
Experiencing the Paschal Mystery By Robert P. Imbelli September 25, 2023 In 1961, I started my one and only year at Saint Joseph’s Dunwoodie, the New York archdiocesan seminary. The monastic regimen and set course of studies were pretty much the same in that year as they had been in 1951, or 1941, or…. We […]
Welder of Words
Welder of Words By Steven Knepper September 25, 2023 During high school and college, I worked in a small-town hardware store. We sold the usual PVC fittings and drywall screws, receptacle covers and paintbrushes. Much of my work was the expected tasks. I unloaded delivery trucks, stocked shelves, and rang up customers. But the job […]
Did the Revolution of 1848 Fail?
Did the Revolution of 1848 Fail? By James J. Sheehan September 25, 2023 In 1871, the great Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt began his lectures on “The Age of the French Revolution” by telling his students that the title of the course was misleading. The age of revolution, he pointed out, was not limited to what […]
What’s the Big Idea?
What’s the Big Idea? By Clifford Thompson September 26, 2023 For a baker’s dozen of years beginning in the late 1990s, I was the editor of a monthly reference journal called Current Biography. Our articles on accomplished living people relied heavily on secondary sources; in the course of writing and editing each 2,500-word biography of […]
Fugitive Gleams
Fugitive Gleams By Christian Wiman September 26, 2023 Over the years I’ve heard countless ministers, ministers-in-training, and even divinity-school professors tell me, often quite cheerfully, that they just don’t “get” poetry. Ancient theology, modern novels, academic philosophy so fanged and rebarbative it would make a layman’s brain bleed—no problem. But slip a sonnet into the […]
The Other Side
The Other Side By Evan Bednarz September 26, 2023 “You have picked a bad night to cross,” the man tells the shivering couple in the kitchen, as they watch snow falling outside the window. The other man replies, “Every night is bad.” This observation, recounted in Octavio Solis’s Retablos, a coming-of-age memoir set in El […]
Two Poems by Josiah Cox
Two Poems by Josiah Cox By Josiah Cox September 26, 2023 SEASONAL All lemon-lime, and caught in the curb, ginkgo wings mind thin spines, brightly pathetic. If they move, they move with whip-wind obligation, then resume a heaviness. If they fly, they fly from boot tread, briefly. For weeks now, trees have heaved freight overboard—pods […]
Poem | Poulenc’s ‘Gloria’
Poem | Poulenc’s ‘Gloria’ By Magda Andrews-Hoke September 26, 2023 “While writing [the Gloria] I had in mind those Crozzoli frescoes with angels sticking out their tongues, and also some solemn-looking Benedictine monks that I saw playing football one day.” —Francis Poulenc I saw the monks cavorting in the avenue, kicking a ball back […]