Things I Received at the Fordham Catholic Imagination Conference
When I received this treasure of practical writing and reading advice I also received a deeper awareness of God at work.
August 2017
The Confused Catholic Imagination
It is commonplace to assume that the imagination is opposed to reality. This is not the prevailing understanding of the imagination in contemporary theory and theology. Let’s start with the following classic rock lyrics to clarify ...
A Memory of Peace
Millions of people converged on Krakow, Poland about a year ago. While among them I gained the ability to imagine a world at peace. I can now imagine global peace. I also know that the Church has something to teach the world about it. In...
Agrarian Insights on Ecological Conversion
Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ posed a tremendous challenge for the Church and the entire world. Although the encyclical letter was seen widely as an intervention on climate change negotiations, it in fact offered much more ...
Dissecting Jesus
The Church is the Mystical Body of Christ . . . and the Mystical Body of Christ is the Church. I cannot remember the number of times I had to explain this to my ecclesiology classes: “The Church is . . . ?” (Without alacrity)...
A Crisis of Eucharist: Will Our Children Stay Catholic?
My brethren, show no partiality as you hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man with gold rings and in fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and you pay a...
The Good of Communal Life
I sat at my community’s small dining room table with my heart overflowing in gratitude. The events of that evening gave me occasion to pause and consider the ways that I have been blessed to live in an intentional faith community w...
St. Maximilian Kolbe and the War Against Indifference
More than one concentration camp survivor has remarked that one would need the pen of Dante to describe the horrors that afflicted the “great army of unknown and unrecorded victims.”[1] Hell is that abyss that skews vision an...
The Hope of the Assumption
Glorious things are spoken of you, O Mary, who today were exalted above the choirs of Angels into eternal triumph with Christ (Entrance Antiphon, The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary) Elite athletes exist at the edge of the possible...
The Supper of the Lamb
Today, I boarded a train from Leuven (where Societas Liturgica is meeting) for Ghent. After years of teaching the Mass to undergraduates, of inviting them to gaze with wonder upon the supper of the Lamb of Van Eyck, I couldn't leave Belg...