I should begin with explaining how, following Bernard Lonergan, I distinguish the medieval from the modern ideals of science. There are two elements at work in the controversy over the supernatural, one “medieval” and the other “modern.” The first, predominating element is metaphysical, concerned with ends, natures, powers, and orders. It proceeds according to a medieval ideal of science (albeit rooted in classical antiquity), one that proved sufficiently powerful to fund the medieval synthesis of Christian doctrine and philosophical speculation. This synthesis has an enduring relevance and ea ..read more

The title “Mother of Mercy” first appears with reference to Mary in the tenth century, in John of Salerno’s Life of Saint Odo (of Cluny). St. Odo died in 942 and John commemorates him a couple of years later, recounting that the Virgin appeared to St. Odo and told him, Ego sum mater misericordiae: I am the Mother of Mercy. The title became more widespread in the eleventh and, especially, the twelfth century with the liturgical use of the hymn Salve Regina, known in English as the Hail Holy Queen, first at the Abbey of Cluny, attested by 1135, and later in Cistercian houses, where by 1218 it wa ..read more

For the heart, life is simple: it beats for as long as it can. Then it stops. Sooner or later, one day, this pounding action will cease of its own accord, and the blood will begin to run towards the body’s lowest point, where it will collect in a small pool, visible from the outside as a dark, soft patch on ever whitening skin, as the temperature sinks, the limbs stiffen and the intestines drain. These changes in the first hours occur so slowly and take place with such inexorability that there is something almost ritualistic about them, as though life capitulates according to specific rules ..read more

My nine-year-old son convinced me to see Cabrini, a movie I am not positive I would have seen without his encouragement. For context, I have watched one episode of The Chosen and have never seen anything else put out by Angel Studios. One night, while we were eating lasagna for dinner and watching Jeopardy!, he exclaimed, “Mama, there is a movie about a Catholic mother coming out soon! You're going to want to see this!” After dinner, he pulled the preview up for us to watch on YouTube, and when I saw that the “Catholic mother” was an early twentieth-century saint named “Mother Cabrini,” I ..read more

The “Catholic Intellectual Tradition” is a concept often invoked to help characterize the warrant for a conversation staged between the sciences and the humanities, where the latter include philosophy and, of course, theology—even if theology is not strictly speaking a discipline of the humanities but a sacred science, a “sacra doctrina,” as Thomas Aquinas would say. It is invoked to address the implicit assumptions about the life of the mind, the intellectual life, and even the nature of human inquiry that make up the premise of such a conversation. It is further invoked to characterize the k ..read more

There are places where the Spirit breathes; but there is one Spirit who breathes in all places. There are some people whom God takes and sets apart. There are others whom he leaves in the masses and whom he does not “withdraw from the world.” These are people who do ordinary jobs, who have an ordinary household, or are ordinary celibates. People who have ordinary illnesses, ordinary deaths. People who have an ordinary house, ordinary clothes, these are the people of ordinary life. The people we meet on any street. They love their door that opens onto the street, just as their brothers, wh ..read more

The Healthy Mind and the Sick Soul Despite having been excommunicated from the Jewish community as a young man and vilified as an atheist and corruptor of morality in his later years, Baruch Spinoza was, it seems, a happy man. Stephen Nadler writes that, though he was often more occupied with his work than with other people, “Spinoza was, when he did put down his work, gregarious, self-controlled, and possessed of a pleasing and even-tempered disposition.”[1] In his Ethics Spinoza writes, It is of the first importance in life to perfect the intellect, or reason, as far as we can, and the high ..read more

Once upon a time there was a puppet who could play chess with great skill. He won fists down and shamed all challengers who, sweating under all too human awe, sat on the table’s other side wondering: by what mysterious means did the machine achieve such a feat? In Theses on the Philosophy of History, Walter Benjamin uses the puppet allegory in order to reveal the metaphysical forces that move history: the puppet of “historical materialism,” who seems a prodigious algorithmic automaton, is actually guided by a dwarf “who was an expert chess player.” The dwarf Benjamin dubs “theology, which toda ..read more

When it comes to Benedict XVI we find ourselves in the strange and awkward position that we neither know how to end nor how to start dealing with his legacy. We don’t know how to end insofar as we continue to receive his person and work. Like Vatican II, of whose reception he spoke so often, we live in the midst of discernment and argument concerning who and what he has bequeathed to us. Yet, we are also not quite sure how or where to begin dealing with a life that was constituted at once by unshakeable Christian conviction and deep investigation into truth, characterized by prayer, focused on ..read more

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