I wrote this piece last year for New Year's Eve/The Feast of Mary, Mother of God. It wasn't published, so I'm putting it up this year on my site. January 1st is the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, a feast celebrated by Catholics and some other Christians. It falls on the eighth day of the Christmas season, and commemorates Christ’s mother, Mary, under one of her most glorious titles: The Mother of God, or Theotokos. But of course, this feast coincides with New Year’s Day. T

I reflect on Stan Lee's life and legacy at First Things: "It was impossible not to look up to Stan Lee if you were a nerdy kid (like me) interested in creating fantastical universes (like me). Books like How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way interspersed comics-drawing tutorials with color commentary from Stan Lee. I got one of those books in a Christmas stocking when I was maybe ten and traced the figures in it to generate my very first superheroes. His personality was so strong

"In 1976, a Guinean priest named Robert Sarah was made rector of John XXIII Minor Seminary in Conakry, Guinea. The previous leadership of the seminary had been lax, and so when Sarah instituted stricter rules the young men of the seminary rebelled in dramatic fashion, setting fire to its chapel. Fr. Sarah demanded the guilty parties come forward, but no one was willing to confess to the arson or reveal the perpetrators. Sarah (now Cardinal Sarah) said in his book-length biogr

"There’s a kernel of an interesting religious film in First Reformed, the new arthouse release from writer-director Paul Schrader (Mishima, Taxi Driver, The Last Temptation of Christ). Unfortunately, it’s buried underneath the grim weight of the terrorist fantasy that Schrader really wants to explore. The film stars Ethan Hawke as a tortured Protestant reverend slowly killing himself with alcohol and self-neglect. His manly grimacing may net him an Oscar; it’s the sort of int

I discuss teaching U.S. history through primary sources at Great Hearts schools: "As for the particular question of teaching American history, Bergez admits there’s something paradoxical about applying a classical approach. Ancient thinkers like Thucydides thought history was not simply old things being displaced by new things, but “something permanent and perennial revealing itself.” But Americans often think of themselves as an exception or aberration. This nation is “A New

I review Science Fiction: A Literary History: "[W]hat becomes clear from a survey of science fiction’s history is that, if there’s one thing these authors love more than cosmic wonder and terror, it’s petty fights about what constitutes “real” science fiction. Not, of course, that these science fiction fights aren’t proxies for fights about science or society itself. Science Fiction: A Literary History, recently published by the British Library and edited by Roger Luckhurst,

I profiled the sculptor Dony Mac Manus, and he told me about how he sees his figural art as a way to help heal a pornified culture. He also discussed a time a giraffe lifted him up by its tongue and dislocated his shoulder. "Though he’ll happily point to the ways his work grows out of Catholic teaching and practice (a sculpture inspired by the papal encyclical Humanae vitae is a favorite of his), Mac Manus sees himself not as a “Catholic artist” but as an artist who is Cathol

"When Calvin Klein plasters billboards with a sprawl of underwear-clad Kardashians, the company is recapitulating the harasser’s logic of sexual entitlement on a monumental scale. “These women are here, undressed and supine, for your pleasure,” the ad seems to say. “This is what you should want.” The ad campaign ostensibly focuses on “unity between strong individuals,” but the languid poses and concussed expressions chosen by the advertisers erase the celebrity models’ indivi

"The Good Place is the most unexpectedly profound show on television. NBC’s afterlife sitcom, which just concluded its second season, stars Kristen Bell as an impostor in paradise and Ted Danson as her supernatural overseer. It begins by skewering shallowly sentimental ideas of heaven and then transitions to asking (sincerely!) how a bad person can become good. You know the show is something special when the Kierkegaard jokes start and don’t let up. Bell plays a selfish woman

"We will not make our culture healthier or our children safer by treating the sexual assault of prisoners as normal, or funny, or just. And, more broadly, we can’t be satisfied granting human dignity to some people while casually dehumanizing others. Prisoners, even those who have done terrible things, are not “monsters” we can use (rhetorically or literally) like subhuman beasts. Wishing rape-as-punishment (even on rapists) is itself wicked and contributes to our broken pris