Creativity
February 21, 2020 (16 words)
Every day is an opportunity to find new ways of expressing our current level of understanding.
The Wrong Reasons
February 18, 2020 (1,838 words)
We are all entitled to our opinions, and we tend to take great pride in them. Unfortunately the vested interest we show in our present level of understanding is what stands in the way of improving…
Pro-Life Presidents
February 15, 2020 (1,646 words)
There was a surprise guest at the March For Life in Washington, D.C. last month, a boisterous rally held annually on the anniversary of the…
All Sorts of Divides
February 9, 2020 (182 words)
It’s hard for men and women to really talk to each other. It’s difficult for a 65 year-old to easily converse with a 25 year-old. Or for folks who wear blue jeans at…
Superstitious and Credulous Citizens
February 8, 2020 (1,105 words)
The last weekend in January presented me with an interesting juxtaposition of ideas. On that Saturday morning The Wall Street Journal featured a review of a new book on one of my favorite…
Chasing Our Tail
February 1, 2020 (600 words)
At last month’s Golden Globe Awards (January 6) the actress Michelle Williams won a prize and caused a stir with her acceptance speech. By way of full…
A Hidden Life
January 31, 2020 (697 words)
Terrence Malick has a new movie out, a three-hour opus entitled A Hidden Life. The last such production of his I dragged my entire family to was The Tree of Life, back in…
Hiding in Plain Sight
January 30, 2020 (1,328 words)
I’ve managed to reach retirement age without ever coming in contact with To Kill a Mockingbird. Not the book that was published in 1960 and won the…
Inadvertent Humor
January 23, 2020 (738 words)
There’s a guy at work who considers me a radical left-wing socialist, because he sees that I sometimes read…
Effective Communication
January 20, 2020 (829 words)
Combativeness is not the best way to communicate. It does, however, have the advantage of getting the juices flowing and invigorating the participants, making them feel more alive in the heat…
Moral Superiority
January 10, 2020 (1,710 words)
It’s only natural to feel sorry for those who are less fortunate than we ourselves are. And the natural response is to try and help in whatever way we…
Intrinsic Joy
January 6, 2020 (500 words)
At this late stage in life, some of us older folks find ourselves with a modest amount of disposal income on our hands, something we couldn’t have imagined during our challenging child-rearing…
Sorting Things Out
December 25, 2019 (5,697 words)
I’ve just started reading the economist Joseph Stiglitz’s latest book, People, Power and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent. If his name doesn’t ring a bell with you, be advised this Mr. Stiglitz…
Recent Polling
December 20, 2019 (306 words)
I managed to stay awake for the first hour of last night’s Democratic presidential debate. Since I haven’t been following the fortunes of the twenty-odd announced contestants in the race, I was surprised…
A Day in the Neighborhood
December 15, 2019 (426 words)
It seems as if the things I most enjoy in life are all dying a slow death and on their way out. Like newspapers, magazines, and going to the movies. But I will continue to frequent all three for as long as they’re still around…
Missionaries of Gratitude
December 15, 2019 (514 words)
When the long-time pastor at the small, neighborhood parish where I now attend Mass reached retirement age in 2015, the Archdiocesan office had no one to send us in his stead. So they imported a couple of young priests from South…
The Last Word
December 8, 2019 (380 words)
When it comes to human affairs, it’s hard for any of us to claim the last word. No matter how highly developed our sense of discernment may be, there is always some perspective that escapes our notice, some angle…
The First Thanksgiving
November 28, 2019 (989 words)
My friends the social conservatives usually have their heart in the right place, but their automatic adoption of the economic and political worldview promoted by their distant cousins, the fiscal conservatives…
History
November 25, 2019 (16 words)
There are many different stories in this world, and they are all being played out simultaneously…
Civilizing America
November 17, 2019 (1,204 words)
At the fall of the no longer Holy Roman Empire, the western territory had been laid waste by Visigoths and other barbarians, and found itself in pretty bad shape. The ravaged, war-torn landscape…
The Warren Way Is Wrong
November 10, 2019 (1,876 words)
Most everyone I know or rub elbows with on a regular basis thinks Elizabeth Warren is a crack pot. There was a guest editorial in The New York Times the other day (Nov 5) that concisely expresses the conventional wisdom regarding the senator from Massachusetts…
Trading Places
November 4, 2019 (186 words)
When I was younger and in my prime, encounters with older guys who were starting to go to seed and turn a bit feeble all went pretty much the same way. They didn’t warrant much attention from me one way or the other, beyond my registering how they seemed a beat slow…
Parental Discretion
October 31, 2019 (133 words)
Being the parent of young adults in their twenties is matter of modulation. One has to learn when to speak up and offer advice, and when to keep quiet and allow your no-longer-young charges to figure things out on their own…
A Music City Reunion
October 15, 2019 (2,130 words)
There were six of us little ones growing up, four boys and two girls. Our younger sister, MaryAnne, was the proverbial baby of the family, and over time she proved to be the glue that held the rest of us together…
Helping or Hurting?
October 10, 2019 (1,986 words)
Our youngest has just started his freshman year of college, and while visiting him last weekend I attended Mass at St. Joseph the Worker Parish, in Williamsport, PA…
Seeing the Forest
October 3, 2019 (773 words)
There’s nothing better than a good epiphany. And one of the best I’ve had in recent years occurred to me in December 2013.
It came via the unexpected backlash to Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”)…
Apples and Oranges
September 28, 2019 (1,559 words)
There are some 50,000 employees of General Motors who are currently out on strike. They are all members of the United Auto Workers, the same union that represents similar employees at Ford and Chrysler.
The contracts between each of the Big Three…
The Welfare State
September 12, 2019 (3,585 words)
The idea of a “Green New Deal” has recently been floated by certain members of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, which has received an infusion of new blood via the November 2018 election.
One of the most outspoken proponents of this audacious concept…
The Standard Send-Off
August 30, 2019 (1,236 words)
When the billionaire philanthropist David Koch recently died at age 79, he got the standard send-off from The Wall Street Journal. It praised his well-known faith in free markets and limited government…
Justification or Atonement
August 23, 2019 (4,217 words)
It’s not uncommon for young, headstrong people to make poor choices and bad decisions while in their halcyon teens and 20s, and sometimes even into their 30’s and 40’s…
Cooperation and Conflict
August 15, 2019 (2,116 words)
Upon turning 75 a little over a month from now, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput will be obliged to submit his resignation to Pope Francis. He has been a faithful bishop, a good man, and an engaging writer. No doubt he will continue to be all three, even in retirement…
The Prancing Prince
July 30, 2019 (379 words)
Some actors hit the ground running and are enjoyable to watch from their very earliest film roles right on through to the end of their careers. William Holden comes to mind…
Bad Parenting
July 29, 2019 (409 words)
I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but all three of our sons have turned out to be libertarians. (They also wear black socks with their sneakers, but I can only deal with one heresy at a time.)…
Leaving Well Enough Alone
July 19, 2019 (151 words)
A lot of popular music is over-produced, isn’t it? You especially notice this when an old song you like comes on the radio. (Remember the radio?) Or when one of your grown children streams…
Changing the Words
July 14, 2019 (615 words)
That rascal Pope Francis is at it again. This time he is recommending a revision to one of our oldest prayers, the Our Father…
All Is True
July 5, 2019 (1,210 words)
Every art form has the power to move me, and usually does. But the one that consistently engages my sensibilities and tugs at my heart strings is drama. Stage or screen, there is something about seeing a good story unfold that always…
It Pays to Notice
June 29, 2019 (1,007 words)
My kind no longer does manual labor to make a living, the way our grandparents did. And we don’t go in for the rather pedestrian civil servant or middle-management positions that were the pride and joy of our parents…
Alms and Charity
June 24, 2019 (385 words)
The full title of the Cross Catholic Outreach official who led our little traveling party of American visitors in Guatemala last week is “International Vision & Mission Trips Officer.” He told us that…
The Depths of Love
June 23, 2019 (934 words)
To a large and vocal contingent of conservative American Catholics it remains “open season” on Pope Francis. In their eyes his transgressions are ongoing, and continue to mount…
The Triple Bottom Line
June 22, 2019 (657 words)
Profit is the bottom line, as we all know. But how many of us are familiar with the Triple Bottom Line? It consists of Profit, People, and Planet. Though the term is said to have been coined way back in 1994, I only just heard about it this week, from an official with Cross Catholic…