Adios, Francis
I grew up on Sacramento Street in St. Joseph, Mo., and it only recently occurred to me how the street probably got its name. St. Joseph, if you recall, was ...
The New Paganism
David Brooks, one of my favorite writers – who was considered a conservative until the Trump era – believes the president is the archetype of contemporary paganism. I know this ...
Why So Hard to Talk about God?
I understand that my weekly blog is counter-cultural, and for some of my friends and acquaintances, it may even be embarrassing. You just don’t talk or write about God, and ...
The New Pope Through a Political Lens
There’s a remarkable passage in the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, that book in the Bible that recounts Christianity’s first years, in which the apostles were gathered ...
How It All Got Started
I have mentioned in a previous blog that in the newsroom of the newspaper where I worked for 22 years was a sign that read, “If your mother says she ...
What Does Faith Offer?
My beloved paternal grandmother, Julia, who died in 1957, had what I’ve heard identified as “late-onset Alzheimer’s.” In other words, she had a kind of dementia that happens late in ...