“His Holiness and Hizzoner”— Pope Francis and the Ghost of Ed Koch
Dear Blahblah You are an insufferable old bat. I don’t give a tuppeny damn what you think Dorothy Day would have done in my position because, number one, I ain’t her, and number two, you wouldn’t know...
View ArticleContra Bill Maher
Try as I might, I just can’t dislike Bill Maher, probably because we represent the same unlikely mixing of the tribes. Normally, here in the American melting pot, Jews marry Italians, and the Irish...
View ArticleImmune to the Francis Effect
Looking back over this past weekend, I’m not sure whether I can pinpoint the exact moment when I was completely and irreversibly Francis’d out. But that moment did come, and once it came there was no...
View ArticleCaught up (A Little) in the Francis Effect
A number of readers have offered negative feedback on my last piece. One was my mother, with whom I Skyped yesterday. “I can’t believe you wrote something bad about the pope!” She cried. “Warn me the...
View ArticleOn Abstaining from Communion
The other week at Mass, I remained in the pew when everyone else got up for Communion. I can’t remember whether I was praying fervently or daydreaming or nodding halfway off — the difference is...
View ArticleLessons from A Modern Family of Introverts
When I say I have no social skills, I mean I lack the flexibility to take part in the Kadesh Operations – the ad hoc alliances, the raids and counter-raids — involved in carving out and holding a place...
View ArticleGeneration Win: LGBT-Rights Supporters and Those Mad Enough to Resist Them
We’re living in a world where jocks use words like “relational” – and come to no profit by it. Two days ago in Slate, Mark Joseph Stern gloated over the role of New York Met Daniel Murphy’s fourth-game...
View ArticleFor Veterans’ Day: Reflections on the Field-Hospital Church
A few years ago, Monsignor Charles Pope wrote a short essay defending the use of martial imagery in hymns and homilies. If tradition carries any weight, the case for is a slam-dunk – or, as the old...
View ArticleAmoris Laetitia and the Family Road Trip
A confession: I’m in no hurry to get through Amoris Laetitia. Two hundred, sixty-four pages is a lot of Pope Francis to dive into all eagerski-beaverski and heedless-like. The first two chapters,...
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