"I have spent this week rehearsing for an amateur, seat-of-our-pants production of “Julius Caesar” (planned before the Shakespeare in the Park controversy). Our cast of eight is putting together the show over five nights of three-hour rehearsals squeezed in after work each day. [...] It is not the ideal way to prepare a professional production (though… Read More
Category: Articles
The Limits Of Planned Parenthood’s Storytelling
"Refusing to show abortion as one of the services Planned Parenthood provides seems oddly prim for a video ostensibly celebrating the clinics’ work. Perhaps Whedon couldn’t figure out how to shoot the procedure in an upbeat way. Or maybe, when he tried, he noticed that this choice compelled him to make further storytelling choices, which… Read More
Bill Nye Unweaves The Rainbow And Undersells Science
"Importantly, Ms. Frizzle doesn’t teach her students about facts alone. Their adventures are meant to unfold the scientific method, not just its fruits. Although The Frizz herself is fearless, and teaches her students to be bold in asking questions, their exploits are also a lesson in humility. Ms. Frizzle’s rallying cry is “Take chances, make… Read More
Evangelization At America’s Largest Parish
"St. Matthew uses its ministries and activities to help parishioners find a smaller community within such a large church. Every one of St. Matthew’s groups is expected to hit three S’s: spiritual, social and service. That means that the pinochle group prays together before breaking out their decks and that members take a spot on… Read More
Yale’s Accidental Tribute To John C. Calhoun
"When I was an undergraduate, John C. Calhoun went largely unmentioned and unthought of in residential college life. If the college had instead been named (as a puckish friend suggested) for William Barron Calhoun (Yale class of 1814, a lawyer and politician from Massachusetts, ardent opponent of slavery), nothing about the day-to-day life of the… Read More
How To Protest Better
"The [Berkeley] riot was ugly, and it helped Yiannopoulos more than it chastened him. It’s hard to imagine what the riot’s instigators thought that they were going to accomplish, but here’s one test for protest techniques that should have given them pause: Does this protest paint an accurate, compelling picture of the world we’re trying… Read More
Diversity, Leaky Roofs, And Aging Priests: The Changing Catholic Church
"The Catholic Church in America is slowly catching up with its shifting flock. The recent classes of ordinands are more diverse and better mirror the multicultural populations they will serve; painful but necessary mergers and closures are taking place; and churches are opening and expanding in the South and the West. But if Catholic Parishes… Read More
We See Through A Sonogram, Darkly
"If we develop a finer sonogram, and move up the date of a detectable heartbeat, the inventor of this new instrument won’t have created a new channel for personhood to be infused into babies, one that flows a little straighter and shorter and reaches them two days earlier. So, what can we do when we’re… Read More
The Lazy Way To Fall In Love With Others
"Having someone come into my home offers me an opportunity to learn to love them better—by a process a bit gentler than aggressively willing myself to love them. Simply having someone over gives me a chance to cultivate what C.S. Lewis calls a storgé sort of love: the love born from familiarity and shared circumstances. Storge… Read More
Is Pope Francis a failure? Not so fast.
"Take a second and make a guess about how much participation in Lenten rituals has diminished for American Episcopalian or Lutheran millennials over the same period covered by CARA’s research. Ten percentage points? More? Less? I don’t know the answer, but I would be surprised if it is only Catholics that are falling away at… Read More