The other day was sort of my 20th college reunion from The Catholic University of America. I say sort of for a number of reasons: I graduated early, and I didn’t actually realize the reunion was happening until I saw photos on
The first Saturday of October this year was a close encounter with how thin the veil is between us and not only heaven, but hell, too. The morning Mass I went to had protesters. It was the 10th anniversary of a monthly
I keep thinking that the “survival guide” to living in these times of scandal and anxiety are the sacraments, of course, and praying the Liturgy of the Hours — the prayer of the Church that priests and consecrated people pray. Then I
One recent Sunday morning — after spending way too long reading and talking and thinking about Archbishop Viganò’s memo calling for the pope to resign — I was craving silence above all. So, of course, I managed to get myself into an
There is a lot of tough news coming out about the Catholic Church accompanied by the clear sense that it will be getting worse before it gets better. Living on the internet too much — as many of us tend to —
There was a moment during the recent Napa Institute conference where I found myself looking around and thinking the exact opposite of what everyday news headlines suggest: We were not too far away from heaven. The Napa Institute was formed to renew
As soon as the news broke about Justice Anthony Kennedy retiring from the Supreme Court, my social-media feeds were both unhinged and filled with coffee cups. During her federal appeals court hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, now-Judge Amy Coney Barrett was
The upside of Attorney General Jeff Sessions using Paul’s Letter to the Romans to defend the administration’s policy of family separation at the border was that people might go read the Bible for a moment. Or so was my prayer. He and
At some point during a few-and-far between break at a “convening” sponsored by Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, my friend Elise turned to me to make sure I had a copy of the “Litany of Trust.” It’s
“I’ve seen wickedness.” Samuel, my Uber driver, described a recent acid attack he read about back in his native Cameroon, recalling all kinds of flashbacks. He talked about some of the unspeakable violence the government there has been known to inflict on