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.
A conversation about the working out of vocation, the nature of obedience, and embodied credibility.
Continue reading On 15 March the Norwegian Bible Society launched its first edition of the Bible published with the 'Catholic Canon'.
Continue reading 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 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 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 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 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 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 A conversation about freedom, fashions, maturing, the fear of death, the longing for beauty - and hieroglyphs.
Continue reading 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 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 "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 It does make you think when you realise how quickly a cultural memory, a religious memory is lost...
Continue reading 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 What does it feel like to be created in the image of God? How do we experience it?
Continue reading Be an anarchist this Advent! Don't give in to shopping hysteria.
Continue reading 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.
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