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  A Japanese friend and colleague who studies history and historiographical epistemology sometimes remarks that cultural battles in the United States break out in Japan five or ten years later. That analysis is proving true once again in the case of abortifacient pills. In... Read More →

  We live in interesting, even dangerous, times. Take your pick of crises from the headlines: shootings; inflation; suicide epidemic; pandemic; opioid overdoses; looming war in the West; threats of violence if Roe v. Wade is overturned. There’s little good news or comfort... Read More →

  On a pack of cigarettes, we see WARNING: Smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and may complicate pregnancy. Some pill bottles read WARNING: Do not drive or operate heavy machinery while taking this product as it may cause drowsiness. Abortion has packaging... Read More →

  Merely a few feet from my bed stood Jack the Youngster, burbling in his Pack ’n Play portable rumpus cage/crib. His emission of growling noises—a favored locution of his and of mine, and an ongoing source of amusement for both of us—was wearing thin now that it was time to... Read More →

  . . . But say there hadn’t been a media leak from the vicinity of the U.S. Supreme Court, and say we didn’t know, or couldn’t intuit, how the Court means to rule this summer on Roe v. Wade’s constitutional sanctity, or lack of it. That would have meant . . . what, exactly,... Read More →

Those Who Give All for Life I got to know Will Goodman when I was in graduate school in Madison, Wisconsin, some ten years ago. On Friday afternoons I prayed outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of town. Will would often be there with... Read More →

Ten years or so ago I was on the subway reading a book. It was warm weather and I was wearing a light blouse. In my peripheral vision I caught sight of a boy of about twelve standing next to me and staring at my chest. I looked down to discover that the top button of my blouse... Read More →

You would think after so long a time we’d be better at this. Lent, Holy Week, Easter. They’ve been observed for some two millennia—and for however many years in our own lives—yet by now, two days after Easter Sunday, we may wonder what it was all about. Well, let me speak for... Read More →

I have been doing a slow walk through J.R.R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion in concert with a Tolkien podcast; concurrently, I am moving through the Old Testament books of Joshua and Judges, accompanied by Fr. Mike Schmitz’s Bible in a Year podcast. The experiences are weirdly similar.... Read More →

  In Herodotus’ Histories we learn that Croesus, King of Lydia, waged war upon his neighbor Cyrus II, the great king of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. At the outset, Croesus felt assured of his victory, having been told by the oracle at Delphi that he would destroy a great... Read More →