Collected here are articles and reviews that have appeared in print, as well as a presentation of my books. There are a few interviews and some sound material, notably my reading of the Gospels in Greek, a project that remains work in progress.

Conversation with Kristine Dingstad

18 March 2024
On 15 March the Norwegian Bible Society launched its first edition of the Bible published with the 'Catholic Canon'.  Continue reading

Conversation with Thomas V. Mirus

23 February 2024
A conversation about the language of music, the meaning of chastity, the redirection of eros, the potential of human nature - and many other things. Continue reading

Conversation with Luke Coppen

14 February 2024 The Pillar
To stand one’s ground is to have the courage to keep getting up, to resist the temptation to think, ‘Oh, since I have fallen already, I may as well just wallow in the mud for a bit.’ Climacus says, ‘Don’t dawdle’ - that’s good advice. Continue reading

Conversation with Daniel Capó

10 February 2024 Ecclesia
The way to chaste integrity passes through honest confrontation with the incoherences and passions we carry. The model could be transferred to the body politic, where one tends to project these things onto others, shunning catharsis and — if you admit the term — conversion. Continue reading

Conversation with Piotr Bednarski

10 January 2024 EWTN Polska
A conversation touching on many topics under the general heading 'transmission of faith in beauty, truth and freedom'. How can an effective mission be configured today? Continue reading

Conversation with Jason Evert

16 November 2023
A thread that runs throughout the project is the motto, 'Lust is boring' - with the implication that the opposite is actually interesting. The hypothesis is borne out by the available material, whose hallmarks are fearlessness, intelligence, and, yes, joyfulness. Continue reading

Conversation with Pablo Cervera

10 November 2023 Religión en Libertad
It can be enjoyable to be an anarchist – at least for a while, and as long as the anarchy of others doesn’t interfere with mine. Continue reading

Conversation with Charlotta Smeds

5 October 2023 Vatican News
A conversation about freedom, fashions, maturing, the fear of death, the longing for beauty - and hieroglyphs. Continue reading

Conversation with Luke Coppen

3 October 2023 The Pillar
When theologians and clergy speak of sexual morality and chastity, one sometimes gets the impression that they have never themselves inhabited, for any length of time, a human body. Continue reading

Outdated Virtue?

29 September 2023 Roman Nights
What is really required is a pedagogy of chaste living. Having forgotten what the word actually stands for, we've reduced chastity to an unobtainable ideal, almost a caricature: the image of a virgin in a white dress in a tower - a reality beyond reach! Continue reading

Conversation with Andreas Masvie

13 September 2023 Minerva
"By all means, there is no lack of polemic in more or less engaged Catholic circles, but much that is presented as in tune with modern tendencies and needs is in fact discreetly perfumed by mothballs." A conversation about tradition and innovation, sense and senselessness. Continue reading

Conversation with Fr Mitch Pacwa SJ

31 August 2023 EWTN
It does make you think when you realise how quickly a cultural memory, a religious memory is lost... Continue reading

Conversation with Tore Hjalmar Sævik

26 August 2023 Dagen
The peculiarly Christian contribution to the construction of a polis is to see it as a community marked, not only by a horizontal dimension, but by a vertical axis pointing heavenward. We're made for more than merely pragmatic and productive collaboration. Continue reading

Conversation with Charlotta Smeds

14 May 2023 Vatican News
What does the Gospel mean in the midst of war? How can our faith help us make sense of violence - and of our obligations when faced with it? Continue reading

Conversation with the Archbishop of Braga

29 April 2023
Have the people of our time lost the sense of the sublime? How, in this day and age, can one credibly bear Christian witness? Continue reading

Conversation with Hannah Brockhaus

5 April 2023 CNA
The notion of the deposit of faith is very deep in the Christian understanding of transmission. It’s an extremely helpful reminder of what a bishop’s task is, namely to keep this deposit, which is vast and expansive, and introduce people to the richness contained in it. Continue reading

Conversation with Luke Coppen

1 April 2023 The Pillar
Easter proclaims that what we think of as defining our lives — transience, death, any number of wounds — is not, in fact, final; that there is a balm in Gilead healing us now and effectively obliterating all that seems to sabotage joy. We find ourselves stepping into a wholly new dimension of being, if we’ve the guts for it, and the love. Continue reading

Conversation with Luca Fiore

11 March 2023 Tracce 03.2023
A conversation held during the New York Encounter touching on the state of the Church, Kafka, Ildefonso Schuster, the signs of the times, gratitude, and the call to holiness.   Continue reading

Conversation with Kim Samuel

6 March 2023
Connectedness is, in my way of thinking, not necessarily positive - one can be connected to a leash, a chain, or a mobile gadget. Belonging on the other hand is dynamic, in movement, an indicator of shared purpose. Continue reading

Conversation with Luke Coppen

21 February 2023 The Pillar
Easter is the assurance that all the things that condition our lives negatively — sin, disease, enmity, hatred, warfare, mortality — all those things have been overcome, and can still be overcome, insofar as we conduct our lives in Christ and let ourselves be formed by Christian hope.  Continue reading

Conversation with Archbishop Pierre

19 February 2023 New York Encounter
What does it feel like to be created in the image of God? How do we experience it? Continue reading

Conversation with Luke Coppen

20 December 2022 www.pillarcatholic.com
What is the Incarnation? What difference did it make? Continue reading

Conversation with Siri Wahl-Olsen

26 November 2022 St Olav kirkeblad
Be an anarchist this Advent! Don't give in to shopping hysteria. Continue reading

Conversation with Solène Tadié

1 November 2022 National Catholic Register
To be a member of the Church is to be a member of Christ. It is also to be a member of a community - we need to make that explicit. Continue reading

Conversation with Petter Stocke-Nicolaisen

31 October 2022 St. Olav 03/2022
One way in which we can contribute constructively to online debate is by making it more reflective and thoughtful. Anyone who constantly shoots from the hip risks misfiring fatally. Continue reading

Conversation with Per Åsmund Reymert

12 October 2022 Vårt Land
The law proposal isn't just about a specific ethical matter; it concerns the relationship between state and citizens. Continue reading

Conversation with Luke Coppen

27 August 2022 The Pillar
A conversation about music, tradition, fatigue, the contemplative life, the building of community, well-balanced beer, and the time to say 'Enough'. Continue reading

Conversation with Martin Rothweiler

23 June 2022 EWTN
A conversation about Catholicism in Norway, about the key role of families in the life of the Church, and about the sense of a Christian call. Continue reading

Conversation with Marilynne Robinson

22 May 2022 The Tablet
'I am struck by the emphasis you place on compassion – and I mean that in the literal sense of being involved in the pathos of another life, of being entangled in other lives, of each man not being an island, but a stitch in a delicate embroidery – an embroidery that will be ­forever imperfect if a single stitch is extracted'. Continue reading

Conversation with Linda Therese Utstøl

13 April 2022 www.katolsk.no
Christian conversion will gradually take us to a point at which we can say, 'It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me'. At that point our own ego will no longer strike us as overwhelmingly interesting. Continue reading

Conversation with Heidi Marie Lindekleiv

6 April 2022 Vårt Land
A conversation about the website CoramFratribus, the importance of reading good literature, the helpfulness and limitations of social media, and the Church's insistence: 'Among the principal duties of bishops the preaching of the Gospel occupies an eminent place' (Lumen Gentium, 25). In Norwegian only. Continue reading

Conversation with Mario Binasco

5 April 2022 Centro Culturale di Milano
What will help me to be freed from my past in such a way that I can live prospectively, moving forward, while at the same time being reconciled with the past? What is the impact of beauty on our lives, and how can I know my deepest desire? Continue reading

Conversation with John Sjögren

18 March 2022 Signumpodden
A conversation with John Sjögren held at Bjärka Säby on 18 February, during the course of a symposium on monastic spirituality. We touch on matters of life and death, the vocation of the monk, the provocative nature of Christianity, the tears of God - and the music of Mahler. Continue reading

A Conversation with Heidi Marie Lindekleiv

5 March 2022 Vårt Land
The older I get, the more I see the importance of reading things over again. The books that really nurture us are books we ourselves should nurture. Continue reading

Conversation with Sarah Coakley

5 February 2022 Church House Book Launch
A conversation with Professor Sarah Coakley about my book 'Entering the Twofold Mystery', touching on a number of key themes. Continue reading

Conversation with Morten Marius Larsen

24 December 2021 Vårt Land
On Christmas Day the papers' first page ought to carry a sensational announcement in massive, bold typescript: 'God has become man!' Continue reading

Conversation with Bishop Olav Fykse Tveit

24 December 2021 Adresseavisen
What matters is to be where you are right now, to be as faithful as possible, doing what you have to do as credibly as possible. Then you find that the invisible things can bear fruit in an ample sphere whereas the visible things turn out to be a bit banal. Continue reading

Conversación con María Martínez López

4 November 2021 Alfa y Omega
A conversation about Norwegian Catholicism, tradition and continuity, the signs of the times, perseverance in faith, true freedom and fresh fish from the Fjord. Continue reading

Roots

18 October 2021 Litteraturhuset, Oslo
Ours is a time of navel-gazing, based on the assumption that the the world revolves around us. It is a Copernican revolution of sorts, but not an especially luminous one. Continue reading

Facing the ‘death of god’

16 October 2021 Verdibørsen P2
A conversation with Eivor Oftestad and Aase Cathrine Myrtveit about how Nietzsche's intuition regarding the 'death of god' is seeping into Western consciousness, about the abuse crisis, about human dignity, and about the courage to be seen as ridiculous. Continue reading

Conversación con Daniel Capó

9 October 2021 The Objective
Si pudiéramos tan sólo darnos cuenta de la libertad de que disponemos para elegir cuál es nuestra visión del mundo. Si fuéramos conscientes de que nadie tiene por qué ser el prisionero de una determinada cosmovisión o mentalidad, ni siquiera de nuestro propio pasado, por muy traumático y difícil que haya sido: Cultivar la memoria del bien constituye una especie de ascesis, un ejercicio imprescindible. Continue reading

Intervju med www.katolsk.no

5 October 2021 www.katolsk.no
Erik Varden har fortsatt en opplevelse av at Norge er både hjemland og utland, og akkurat det, sier han, er ikke så dumt når man har ansvar for noe så multikulturelt som katolske menigheter i Norge. Det har også noe med det å være kristen å gjøre: Vårt hjemland er i Himmelen. Continue reading

Williams, Looking East in Winter

23 June 2021
In a memorable image, Diadochos speaks of baptismal grace as the divine artist’s monochrome sketch: it is for us in conscious collaboration with the Spirit to fill in the colours. And ‘when the full range of colours is added to the outline, the painter captures the likeness of the subject, even down to the smile’. Continue reading

Intervista Tracce

2 January 2021 Tracce
Oggi ascoltare il soffio è divenuto difficile, perché ci sono tante impressioni, e si impongono quasi con violenza. Per questo serve avere dei sensi abbastanza affinati: ci vuole apertura; uno spazio di ascolto profondo, di attesa. Continue reading

Intervju i KulturPlot

17 December 2020 KulturPlot
Å komme noen vei i det åndelige liv handler om å ha mot til å ta av seg lag etter lag av den rustningen vi bygger mellom oss og andre, og det andre, for å bli radikalt tilgjengelig og tilstedeværende som den du faktisk er. Hele den monastiske modning går ut på å bli den du er på dypet. Continue reading

Intervju i Fast Grunn

8 December 2020 Fast Grunn
Den sorte og hvite munkekutten til biskopen stikker seg ut i bybildet, klosterdrakt og en hvit ulljakke og sandaler med sorte strømper. Ja, det er sånn det er: Det har kommet en ny munk til den gamle klosterbyen Nidaros. Continue reading

Intervju med Oj! Trøndersk mat og drikke

4 December 2020 www.matriketmidt.no
Det som er morsomt med den formen for håndverksbrygg er jo at prosessene får lov til å ta tid. At det ikke er noe som er påskyndet, at det ikke er noe kjemiske tilskudd og at ingrediensene er latterlig enkle: alt du trenger er vann, malt, humle, gjær og litt sukker. Continue reading

Intervju i Adresseavisen

3 October 2020 Adresseavisen
Hva gjør du om du overhodet ikke drømmer om å bli katolsk biskop, men Paven velger deg? Hva om du endelig hadde funnet din retning i livet, et kall som fylte tomrommet du hadde båret i deg helt siden barndommen? Continue reading

Intervju i Vårt Land

2 October 2020 Vårt Land
Vi har glemt dette kollektive å tenke nåden rett og slett som oksygenet vi puster i, som noe ømt og trøstende. Vi tenker oss ofte troslivet som et regnskap hvor nåden er en matematisk kalkulerbar faktor; men det er kanskje ikke helt sånn det er. Continue reading

Intervju i Dagen

2 October 2020 Dagen
For 20-30 år siden kunne man oppleve at individer og institusjoner var i opposisjon mot det kristne. Man opplevde dette som en maktinstans, noe knugende totalitaristisk. Continue reading

Interview in The Tablet

15 September 2018 The Tablet
What is the sign that one is stuck? A loss of joy. Continue reading