"Almost every discussion of “Catholics” as a single, undifferentiated group, is about as useful as articles on “Millennials.” Catholics who attend Mass regularly tend to give very different answers than those who were baptized but don’t particularly practice, but they are often all rolled up into one category. In fairness to the pollsters, it’s expensive… Read More
Both/And Philanthropy
"Jeremy Beer endorses local charities [in The Philanthropic Revolution: An Alternative History of American Charity], which can best further what he sees as the primary purpose of philanthropy, 'to increase opportunities for and strengthen the possibilities of authentic human communion.' In contrast, William MacAskill [in Doing Good Better] cuts ties with a charity focusing on… Read More
How To Strengthen Catholic Community
"Churches can include more 'Winter Christian' themes in homilies and hymns. Winter Christians are both intensely engaged with their faith, but also intensely stymied by spiritual dryness, doubts, a persistent sin, or some other difficulty. (They’re unlike 'Summer Christians' who are joyfully drawn to the faith, and completely unlike people who like or dislike the church,… Read More
The Catholic Census
"Any other Saturday night, I might technically be able to pray with a stranger, but I wouldn’t have known how to ask. The papal visit drew people out, and made it easy to disclose our faith to each other. It felt like a much more joyful and communal version of the annual Catholic Census that… Read More
Transactional Salvation
"Just like the children [in the marshmallow test], we’ve been asked to wait out a temptation in exchange for greater rewards in this life or the next (and we tend to cheat in fairly similar ways). But the experiment also exposes some reasons that this understanding of God’s rules may wind up leaving a bitter… Read More
Bridging the Word Gap
"Poorer children start falling behind the richer children in their age cohort long before they toddle off to their first day of school or sit down for their first standardized test. Before formal instruction begins, children learn from their parents. Poorer children fall into a 'word gap'—they hear and say fewer things per day than… Read More
On Prayer, Post-Conversion
"When I started adapting my life to make room for God, I took to scheduling in religion the way that I’d schedule a dinner with a friend, or a movie night. I made sure to leave discrete blocks of time to do religion, whether it was going to Daily Mass at the church down the… Read More
The Art of Argument
"Arguendo tells the story of Barnes v. Glen Theatre Inc., a Supreme Court case brought by an ensemble of exotic dancers who claimed that a restriction on public nudity was a violation of their First Amendment rights to artistic expression. Just as it did in Gatz, a six-hour staging of The Great Gatsby, the Elevator… Read More
You Don’t Get Apologia Like You Used To
"The best dialogue in Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away is the titular first one, which, like Plato’s own writings is being related after the fact, for the benefit of a new audience. Cheryl, Plato’s media escort for his speaking engagement at Google, is explaining her challenging afternoon to a friend over drinks.… Read More
Time to Come Clean On Torture
"It’s no coincidence that Obama uses 'folks' to refer both to the people tortured and the people doing the torturing. Both uses are distancing and anonymous. There’s no mention of the individuals who were made to undergo simulated drowning (some over a hundred times) or the specific people who signed off on these procedures. People… Read More