This past fall I taught my course on atheism for a second time. It was well received last spring, the first time a course on atheism had been offered at Georgetown University. So, I decided to teach it again. Why offer a course on atheism at a Catholic institution? Many who take the course identify as atheist, but some are Christians who want to know more, while others are struggling with their beliefs. The course, it turns out, is a series of surprises for all. The first surprise is that atheism has never simply been atheism. That is, it has never been simply a denial of the existence of ..read more

The early Aughts were great for new alternative music, or so I’m told. I wasn’t paying attention, being overwhelmed with caring sleeplessly for three young children, plus finishing a dissertation and a sideline book. But, apparently, the scene in New York City was buzzing with groups like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Strokes. At the tail end of this era came a band of Columbia students who played in Brooklyn art galleries and got their MySpace page promoted by the New York Times before they even had an album out. Their song “Cousins,” about family connections, summarizes the trajectory aptly ..read more

The philosopher Pascal once quipped, “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Pascal’s deliberate hyperbole contains a truth that is perhaps more evident in our time than in his. While we seem to find ourselves more alone and more lonely than in previous generations, we are hardly quiet or at rest. We seem addicted to lives of endless distraction, especially on screens, an addiction that makes us less capable of being silent, still, and attentive. Pascal also thought that young people, whose lives he described as “all noise, diversions, and thought ..read more

The last several years of teaching collegiate introductory Catholic theology courses at multiple universities have convinced me that the very rationale of a mandatory theology course at a Catholic university, as well as the material typically studied in such courses, are largely unintelligible to many students. If my experience is representative to any degree, it indicates a significant crisis for collegiate theological education. And this crisis extends beyond the theology classroom. It touches the entire liberal arts enterprise and concerns the crisis facing the humanities as whole. More on ..read more

Since the end of the nineteenth century[1], the brain has held a regnant place in Western notions of the human person. With the dawn of modern experimental methods of stimulating and imaging the nervous system, scientists obtained incontrovertible evidence that the brain is a necessary physical substrate of human thought and behavior. This conclusion has undoubtedly yielded good fruit both in our medical practice and our self-awareness as a species. But it has also fueled a peculiar form of reductionism: the view that the neural is the primary explanatory level of reality. This neurocentric id ..read more

Careful readers of Scripture committed to its truth as an article of faith often face challenges when its details stand in tension and even contradiction. Examples are easy to produce: Was the Passover celebrated on Thursday evening prior to our Lord’s crucifixion (as asserted by the Synoptic Gospels) or on Good Friday (as asserted in John; cf. John 18:28)? Were land animals and birds created prior to humans (Gen 1:20–27) or after (Gen 2:19)? Did Judas return the price of his betrayal (Matt 27:3–10), or did he use it to buy the field in which he died (Acts 1:18–19)? For readers who understand ..read more

When the pope speaks, Catholics tend to listen. Confusion often arises, however, when we do not have the tools to know how to properly listen. Using examples from Pope Francis’s pontificate (and some from other pontificates) we will outline the various types of papal writings in their scope, purpose, and doctrinal weight. One way to approach reading papal documents is to think of them as differing genres. Much like one would not read a newspaper, a poem, and a cookbook the same way, one also should avoid thinking of an apostolic constitution, a brief, and a homily in the same fashion. As you w ..read more

Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio delivered a speech on 7 March 2013 that would change his life and the life of the Church. That day, this relatively unknown ecclesial commodity—at least to the outside world—spoke for just under four minutes to the cardinals about to elect Pope Benedict XVI’s successor. In remarks that papal biographer Austen Ivereigh once likened to the Gettysburg Address, Bergoglio set out his vision of the Church.[1] His audience found this vision so inspiring that they elected him Pope Francis six days later. At the speech’s climax, Bergoglio urged the church to be missionary, to ..read more

The novel The Damnation of Theron Ware, published in 1896, unspools the tale of a young Methodist minister who, thanks to Catholics, science, bohemianism, and good old American pragmatism, loses his faith. Yes, Reverend Theron Ware was vulnerable, no doubt. His pride, limited intellectual, spiritual and social background as well as the bitter, humiliating realities of church life rendered him susceptible to the possibility of damnation— or “illumination” as the novel’s original title slyly suggests; but what a journey it is, a complex trajectory put in motion and shaped by entanglements with a ..read more

St. Gianna Beretta Molla is a saint for our times. But, not for the reasons many believe. St. Gianna’s story is often portrayed as follows: she gave up her life so her child could live, thereby setting a heroic example for us of what it means to be a mother, a good mother, a godly mother. When I first “met” St. Gianna, I was frankly suspicious. As a sociologist, I immerse myself in studying how the examples we use and the stories we tell shape our ideals of what a person should be, what a saint looks like, who qualifies as a good mother. And, as a Catholic doula, one of the most dangerous narr ..read more