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.
I get quickly bored by attempts to just condemn the contemporary world, or to proclaim that it's gone off the rails. If we as Christians could only look out on the world with a bit more love, and I don't mean a feeling of lovey-dovey love, I don't mean being emotional or endlessly affirming, but looking out on the world and seeing it as a world that merits to be saved by grace.
Continue reading What has the monastic tradition taught us about being human? Is contemplation in competition with rational enquiry?
Continue reading Our wounds will finally heal when they have become so one with Christ’s, so fully surrendered, that we no longer know where his passion ends and ours begins.
Continue reading Within the mystery of the Church, we dare to believe that a Christian life truly given may, by God’ s providence, be an effective balm on the wounds of the poor of our world, who are given us to carry and nurture.
Continue reading In the Book of Daniel, the prophet is referred to as vir desideriorum, a man of desires. This image has always represented the archetype of the monk; it is not less the archetype of the apostles, and of every Christian.
Continue reading Don Luigi Giussani, a priest of Milan, was one of the twentieth century's great teachers and preachers of Catholic faith, ever clear in his allegiance to the Church, ever committed to making Catholic doctrine comprehensible, applying it with originality and passion to the predicaments, hopes, and anxieties of our times.
Continue reading Do you remember the account of Christmas 1886 in Thérèse of Lisieux’s Story of a Soul? It describes the incident which she, that incomparable Doctor of the Church, would later refer to as her ‘conversion’.
Continue reading Christianity is of the dawn - if at times, during given periods, we feel enshrouded by twilight, it is because another day is in the making. If we do want to deal in the currency of ‘pre’ and ‘post’, I think it more apposite to suggest that we stand on the threshold of an age I would call ‘post-secular’.
Continue reading Speaking of 'sexual liberation' we slap a problematic label onto a complex cultural development. In fact, the term rather undermines itself.
Continue reading As for signs of hope in the Church, I see an immense array, alive in charity and goodness.
Continue reading The Norwegian version of my book on chastity carries the title that from the inception of this project has been my work title, 'Homo castus'. It is my concern to show that chastity concerns more than just sexual morality; that it refers to a way of being human that is characteristic of our essential nature.
Continue reading Our aim is to contribute constructively - ours isn’t an angry or overwrought statement. We affirm the preciousness of life, of each person — in whom we wish to recognise a sister, a brother, a potential friend, seeing them as much as possible as God sees them, that is, with immense hope.
Continue reading It is a mistake to reduce personhood to an abstraction, as if it were merely an idea in our mind, potentially changeable at will.
Continue reading It took me years to develop the courage to speak of a 'vocation', the word at first seemed too big for me. Nonetheless, the encounter with monastic life provided in me a sense of recognition, as if it provided a resonance of myself.
Continue reading I am convinced that we're in the middle of a cultural shift in our countries. In a certain sense the process of secularisation has now come to an end - yet the human being remains a human being, seeking meaning, beauty, and truth.
Continue reading How to recover a coherent conception of the human person in the face of pervasive dehumanising ideologies? A conversation with Sebastian Morello.
Continue reading I love that moment at the beginning of a concert when each musician plays to him or herself in corporate chaos - then there's a sudden silence in which you can hear the A intoned by the oboe; and all the other instruments align themselves to it, first quietly, then with ever greater strength until, at last they are ready to start. What matters is to learn to listen out for that oboe.
Continue reading What does it mean to be a Christian in today's tension-filled world? What is 'vocation' - and is there any point in trying to 'sublimate' desire?
Continue reading It worries me that modern European usage pretty universally displays an impoverishment of vocabulary. The less able I am to draw careful distinctions between different terms, the more susceptible I am to simplifying generalisations, prejudices, and sheer silliness.
Continue reading Discourse about renewal in the Church can sometimes regrettably seem like a battlefield with opposing fronts - there is no shortage of big guns with heaps of ammunition. It is important, then, to listen out for the still small voice, to look out for modest but fruitful initiatives sprouting in unlikely terrain, like wildflowers.
Continue reading It is phenomenal, this message - Get ready to live! The older I get, the more I am convinced that many people expereince a kind of arrested potential for life; they know they have it in them to exist with a higher degree of intensity than they actually do; and it can be frustrating to find that this ability is not realised.
Continue reading The pedagogy of chastity presupposes frank recognition of who I am and where I am.
Continue reading If I conceive of myself as the sun in a universe of extinct stars, I will always remain the sole subject of a relationship. Sure, I may realise that others exist, but I do not see them as meaningful.
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