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.
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 ‘It is rare’, wrote Simone Weil in 1940, ‘to see misfortune fairly portrayed’. Confronted with the apparent ultimatum of force, we tend to ‘treat the unfortunate person as though catastrophe were his natural vocation’.
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 good news of the body’s significance and of the realisable, death-defying scope for human wholeness was entrusted to a ragged dozen people in a collective state of post-traumatic stress, not especially brilliant humanly speaking, but shorn by stark humiliation of presumption, so freed to proclaim a message that surpassed them.
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 It is curious: our intensely body-conscious society in fact takes the body lightly, refusing to see it as significant of identity, supposing that the only selfhood of consequence is the one produced by subjective self-perception, as we construct ourselves in our own image.
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 He, born on Holy Saturday, had once for all anchored his life in the power of Jesus's passion, death, and resurrection. Anyone who has seen him celebrate the sacred mysteries knows how really present this power was for him.
Continue reading At Mass we take part in Christ’s saving sacrifice; we witness the influx of eternity in time; we touch the foundation of the daring prayer the priest prays on our behalf when, in the chalice, he mixes water with wine: ‘May we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.’
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.
Continue reading 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 The law proposal isn't just about a specific ethical matter; it concerns the relationship between state and citizens.
Continue reading The law proposal comes across as a wrestling match with a shadow. Notwithstanding its repeated use of words such as 'protect', 'help, and 'support', it appears peculiarly technocratic and inhuman.
Continue reading ‘Anthropocentrism kills the Church and its life’. These are hard words, but words we need to hear, for we live in a self-centred world.
Continue reading A conversation about music, tradition, fatigue, the contemplative life, the building of community, well-balanced beer, and the time to say 'Enough'.
Continue reading In her correspondence we encounter Edith Stein as a spiritual mother profoundly open to the experiences and needs of those whom she carried in her prayers. To be a mother or a father is precisely about enabling the growth and maturing of others.
Continue reading The challenge of owning oneself as oneself, of making peace, not just with humanity in general, but with oneself as a human specimen, is the first major combat a novice encounters. Anyone who has essayed it knows it can be fierce.
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