I've written an essay for the Catholic News Agency, on abuse inside and outside the Catholic Church. McCarrick, Han, and Ronnell all carried out parts of their abuse in the open. Their campaigns of control and cruelty may not have always created the trail of evidence needed to convict them of a crime, but there… Read More
Category: Articles
Care for the Dying is the Last Hospitality
In Sarah Ruhl’s For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday, death is an idea we have to sneak up on. The play imagines that five children are gathering to help their father die well and to navigate the aftermath. [...] As their father moans and moves, but does not speak, the siblings disagree, with patience and… Read More
Killing Tyranny with Kindness in The Winter’s Tale
No villain ruins Leontes but himself—no wicked daughters deceive him with flattery, no Iago drips poison in his ear. In an instant he becomes convinced, despite the lack of evidence, that his wife Hermione has become the lover of King Polixenes of Bohemia, his dear friend. As he spirals into self-sustaining despair, Leontes becomes a… Read More
Summer in the Forest: “The Weak Lead Us To Reality”
Summer in the Forest, Randall Wright’s documentary on Jean Vanier and his L’Arche communities for the disabled, contains a number of indelible moments. In one, an elderly man sits, docilely, for a haircut. As a younger worker clips his hair, he holds out his knobbled hand and receives the milkweed-silk trimmings in his palm. The… Read More
I Was A Nine Year Old Stoic…
I reviewed several books of New Stoicism for Fare Forward, and discussed my own Stoic-influenced childhood. Here's an excerpt: I loved Stoicism for two reasons, one petty and one profound. I liked that Stoicism seemed to make me stronger (and, thus, to my thinking then, better) than other people. While the other kids were upset, I… Read More
Death and Dappled Hope: Meditations on Biden’s Memoir
Sustained by his family’s love and his love for them, Biden can carry the weight of tragedy and offer it as a gift to others. At the beginning of the book, he describes visiting the family of Wenjian Liu, a police officer murdered on duty, and offering the widow his personal phone number. He tells… Read More
Aziz Ansari’s hookup was a game of Russian roulette
If Aziz Ansari is reading all the thinkpieces about him, he must feel most ill-served by his allies. “Aziz Ansari Is Guilty. Of Not Being a Mind Reader” wrote Bari Weiss for the New York Times, exonerating Ansari in a singularly insulting way. It’s unreasonable, Weiss and others write, to expect Ansari and other men to… Read More
Asking Catholic Women About Vocations, Prayer, Confession, and NFP
I partnered with America to do a series of sidebars, looking through the data in the survey of 1500 Catholic women in America that the magazine produced in partnership with the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. Here are links to my four short pieces: The Prayer Lives of Catholic Women We asked women about… Read More
The couple that writes Star Wars takes together…
My husband and I enjoyed seeing The Last Jedi, and we both wrote up appreciations of the film. At Aleteia, I wrote "Kylo Ren: The Star Wars not-quite-villain whose temptations are familiar" The combination of great power and great irresponsibility would be enough to make for a challenging antagonist, but Kylo Ren is more than just… Read More
Consent isn’t the Opposite of Louis C.K.
Consent, as the primary criterion for sexual ethics, thinks too small. The careful, consent-seeking lover seeks to use his own strength correctly and responsibly. If a lover of this type finds that his strength is a little too daunting, a little too hard to wield cautiously, the solution is to find ways to limit his… Read More