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April 2022

April 19, 2022

Punch Or Be Punched? The Crucified God and Nicea’s Long Shadow

Every year during Advent and Christmas, punchy Catholic dudebros who think themselves clever clutter...

November 2021

November 29, 2021

The Secret That Shouldn’t Be

Mark Shea's excellent primer on Catholic social teaching has the catchy but rather odd...

November 08, 2021

5 Things People Get Wrong About the Reformation

This is the time of year when people talk about the Reformation because of...

September 2021

September 19, 2021

Conservatives and Corona: Why is the Pandemic Polarized?

One of the weirdest aspects of this endless pandemic is the political polarization of...

March 2021

March 06, 2021

The Sacrifice of the Beloved Son

This past Sunday, the Catholic lectionary juxtaposed two famous Biblical stories. In the Old...

February 2021

February 21, 2021

Unveiling the Virgin

In grad school, I read a book called Veiled Threats by Michael Carroll, a Canadian scholar...

February 16, 2021

Homo factus est: Why Bishop Bode was right

Did Christ become a human being or a man? According to the German bishop Franz-Josef...

January 2021

January 23, 2021

If this isn’t a prolife issue, then nothing is

Many Catholics claim that a wide variety of issues are "prolife." I am one of...

January 11, 2021

In the Day of Disillusion

Near the end of G. K. Chesterton's play "The Judgment of Dr. Johnson," the hero,...

December 2020

December 01, 2020

The Biden Dream: Hadley Arkes and “Moral Consequence”

However reluctant many Trump supporters are to admit it, it now seems quite clear that...

November 2020

November 29, 2020

The Parable of the Talents Revisited

Over the past few weeks, during Year A of the Eucharistic lectionary, we've been hearing...

November 01, 2020

The Pope, the atheists, and salvation by grace

Some of my conservative evangelical friends have been upset (or perhaps even gleeful?) this past...

October 2020

October 27, 2020

Loud Live the Dogma: Amy Coney Barrett and the Secular Fallacy

Progressives are understandably in mourning due to the confirmation yesterday of Amy Coney Barrett as...

October 06, 2020

Allegory gone wild?

My trusty colleague and sparring partner in matters of Biblical interpretation, "Fellow Dying Inmate," wrote...

August 2020

August 23, 2020

Standing on the Promises: Why Catholics believe Peter is the Rock

During my 19 years of being an Episcopalian, this particular Sunday in the church year...

August 21, 2020

Remembering St. Bernard: Theologian of love

One of my grandmother's favorite medieval Catholics was, as it happens, St. Bernard of Clairvaux....

August 16, 2020

Rejoicing in the House of God’s Prayer

I love the fact that the Old Testament readings at Mass correspond, as a general...

August 05, 2020

Vatican II and the Hermeneutic of Continuity

It's becoming more common for conservative Catholics to criticize Vatican II. Most recently, Anthony Esolen...

July 2020

July 17, 2020

Jumping out of the Flying Ship: Resisting False Traditionalism

I was planning to write a blog post, or possibly a series, on "cancel...

July 13, 2020

But it’s not modern

Nearly ten years ago, when I lived in Huntington Indiana, I volunteered to read to...

July 08, 2020

God and the gods: will the real monotheism stand up?

My Patheos colleague "Fellow Dying Inmate" has been writing a fascinating series of posts on...

July 05, 2020

A Very Decent Sort of Horse, On the Whole

In April 2009, English journalist Edward Luce asked President Barack Obama if he believed in...

June 2020

June 28, 2020

Keeping Our Balance on Slippery Slopes

First, they came for the Confederate statues. But it didn't stop there. Soon, the "woke"...

June 23, 2020

The Lure of the New, the Tug of the Old

Most of the arguments I get into on Facebook are about theology or politics. And...

June 13, 2020

The Warlord You See Is the Warlord You Are

Last Monday, police withdrew from six blocks of Seattle's "Capitol Hill" neighborhood, abandoning the area...

June 05, 2020

Black Lives Matter: In Defense of Shibboleths

It seems to be remarkably hard for many white conservative Christians to affirm the slogan...

May 2020

May 27, 2020

Ascension and the Pandemic

This past Sunday, many American Catholics celebrated the Ascension of the Lord into heaven. The...

May 20, 2020

My Search for the Perfect Church

Welcome to this new Patheos blog, Light in the West! As you can see from...

December 2018

December 31, 2018

It’s a Wonderful Life: defending eucatastrophe

(Image attribution: still from It's A Wonderful Life, National Telefilm Associates, public domain) It's a...

October 2018

October 31, 2018

Reformation day revisited, from the other side of the Tiber

Three years ago, I wrote this rather polemical piece attacking the celebration of "Reformation...