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Fleming Rutledge’s The Crucifixion is one of the most stimulating and thought-provoking books of theology that I have read in the past 10 years.
Both an academic and a well-regarded preacher in the Episcopal tradition, Rutledge has an extraordinary knack of cutting to the heart of the matter. Her book on the central reality of the Christian faith is supremely illuminating, a delight for the inquiring mind — and man, will it ever preach.
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There is, in many quarters, increasing concern about the hyper-charged political correctness that has gripped our campuses and other forums of public conversation.
Even great works of literature and philosophy — from Huckleberry Finn and Heart of Darkness to, believe it or not, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason — are now regularly accompanied by “trigger warnings” that alert prospective readers to the racism, sexism, homophobia, or classism contained therein.
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There is, in many quarters, increasing concern about the hyper-charged political correctness that has gripped our campuses and other forums of public conversation.
Even great works of literature and philosophy — from Huckleberry Finn and Heart of Darkness to, believe it or not, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason — are now regularly accompanied by “trigger warnings” that alert prospective readers to the racism, sexism, homophobia, or classism contained therein.
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I had the enormous privilege recently of addressing English-speaking priests from around the world who had gathered in Rome for a special Jubilee celebration of the Year of Mercy. I met Fathers from the States, Canada, Australia, Latvia, Ghana, Cameroon, Ireland, Nigeria, and many other countries.
During the Communion at the Mass which followed my talk, I saw hundreds of priests in their albs coming to the altar to receive the Lord, and I thought of the passage from the Book of Revelation concerning the white-robed army gathered around the throne of the Lamb.
As a basis for my presentation, I used the wonderful story from the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel concerning Jesus’ conversation with the woman at the well. From this encounter, I derived four principles regarding the divine mercy.
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With his latest film, Last Days in the Desert, Rodrigo Garcia has accomplished something truly remarkable.
He has taken a portion of the life of the single most compelling person who has ever lived and turned it into a colossally boring movie.
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A recent issue of Time Magazine features a fascinating and deeply troubling article on the prevalence of pornography in our culture.
The focus of the piece is on the generation of young men now coming of age, the first generation who grew up with unlimited access to hardcore pornography on the Internet. The statistics on this score are absolutely startling.
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Reliable sources have informed me that for the millennial generation, Bill Nye is a figure of great importance, due to his widely-watched program from the 1990s called Bill Nye the Science Guy.
Evidently, he taught a large swath of American youth the fundamentals of experimental science and became for them a sort of paragon of reason. Well, I’ll take their word for it.
But judging from a recent video in which Bill Nye discussed the relation between science and philosophy, I can only tell you that he sure is not the “philosophy guy.”
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Fr. Daniel Berrigan, SJ, passed away April 30 at the age of 94. Though many younger Catholics might not remember him, Father Berrigan was one of the most provocative and controversial religious figures of his time.
Standing in the tradition of principled non-violence proposed by Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, and others, Berrigan led the charge against America’s involvement in the Vietnam conflict and its on-going participation in the Cold War and the nuclear arms race.
He was most famous, of course, for his leadership of the “Catonsville Nine,” a group of protestors who, in the spring of 1968, broke into a building and burned draft records with homemade napalm. To say that he was, during that tumultuous time in American history, a polarizing figure would be an understatement.
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Last week the world marked the 400th anniversary of the death of the greatest writer in the English language and one of the three or four most significant artists the human race has produced. William Shakespeare simply contains so much.
In the manner of Dante, Homer, Michelangelo, James Joyce, and Aquinas, he seems to encompass the whole: every texture of feeling, every nuance of thought, the tragedy of sin, the most exquisite longings of the soul, the most confounding confusions, heaven, hell, and everything in between.
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In my capacity as regional bishop of the Santa Barbara pastoral region, which covers two entire counties north of Los Angeles, I am obliged to spend a good deal of time in the car.
To make the long trips a bit easier, I have gotten back into the habit of listening to audio books. Just recently, I followed, with rapt attention, a book that I had read many years ago but which I had, I confess, largely forgotten: C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce.
The inspiration for this theological fantasy is the medieval idea of the refrigerium, the refreshment or vacation from Hell granted to some of the souls abiding there.
