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The Genesis Problem

I’m continually amazed how often the “problem” of Genesis comes up in my interactions with people online. What I mean is the way people struggle with the seemingly bad science that is on display in the opening chapters of the first book of the Bible. How can anyone believe that God made the visible universe in six days, that all the species were created at the same time, that light existed before the sun and moon, etc., etc? How can Christians possibly square the naïve cosmology of Genesis... Read More

What Faith Is and What it Isn’t

The Protestant theologian Paul Tillich once commented that “faith” is the most misunderstood word in the religious vocabulary. I’m increasingly convinced that he was right about this. The ground for my conviction is the absolutely steady reiteration on my Internet forums of gross caricatures of what serious believers mean by faith. Again and again, my agnostic, atheist, and secularist interlocutors tell me that faith is credulity, naïvete, superstition, assent to irrational nonsense, acceptance... Read More

The YouTube Heresies

A few years ago I began posting brief reflections on movies, music and culture on YouTube, probably the most watched Web site in the world. In my mind, this exercise resembles St. Paul's venture onto the Areopagus in Athens, preaching the Gospel amid a jumble of competing ideas. YouTube is a virtual Areopagus, where every viewpoint—from the sublime to the deeply disturbing—is on display. Never as a Catholic teacher or preacher have I addressed less of the "choir.” The most numerous... Read More

What ‘Gravity’ Teaches us about Technology and God

Spoiler alert: The article below includes key plot details for the film “Gravity."   Alfonso Cuaron’s “Gravity” is the most visually arresting movie I've seen since “Avatar.” Its special effects have been quite rightly characterized as revolutionary and groundbreaking. But what is perhaps most surprising about this stunning film is its clear and profound religious import. The movie opens with a splendid vista of the earth viewed from outer space. As we are taking in this delicious... Read More

‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ and the Dangers of Consequentialism

The 2011 film “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” belongs to a genre that goes back at least to Mary Shelley’s nineteenth century masterpiece Frankenstein, for it tells the story of well-intentioned scientist who, through ignoring legitimate moral limits, courts disaster. James Franco plays a San Franciscan DNA researcher called Will Rodman, who is specializing in the treatment of brain disorders, especially Alzheimer’s disease. Under the sponsorship of a large pharmaceutical company, he is... Read More

Andrew Sullivan’s Non-Threatening Jesus

A recent cover story for “Newsweek” magazine, penned by political and cultural commentator Andrew Sullivan, concerns the “crisis” that is supposedly gripping Christianity. Weighed down by its preoccupation with doctrines and supernatural claims, which are incredible to contemporary audiences, compromised by the corruption of its leadership, co-opted for base political ends, Christianity is verging, he argues, on the brink of collapse. The solution Sullivan proposes is a repristinizing of... Read More

Hannah Arendt and the Shadow of Evil

The appearance of an art house film on the philosopher Hannah Arendt has sparked renewed interest in an old controversy. In 1961, Arendt went to Jerusalem as a correspondent for the New Yorker magazine to cover the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the notorious Nazi colonel accused of masterminding the transportation of millions of Jews to the death camps. Arendt was herself a Jew who had managed to escape from Nazi Germany and who had been, years before, something of an ardent Zionist. But she had since... Read More

The Very Sad Childfree Life

Time Magazine's recent cover story "The Childfree Life" has generated a good deal of controversy and commentary. The photo that graces the cover of the edition pretty much sums up the argument: a young, fit couple lounge languidly on a beach and gaze up at the camera with blissful smiles—and no child anywhere in sight. What the editors want us to accept is that this scenario is not just increasingly a fact in our country, but that it is morally acceptable as well, a lifestyle choice that... Read More

The Folly of De-Baptism

Following the successful campaign in England to mount placards on buses saying “there's probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life”, the land that gave us Thomas a Becket, Edward the Confessor, Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas More and John Henry Newman is now producing hundreds of thousands of people who are endeavoring to renounce their Christian identities by de-baptizing themselves. A group called the National Secular Society is encouraging people to buy a parchment (which the NSS... Read More

The Coen Brothers and the Voice from the Whirlwind

In the course of my ministry as a teacher, lecturer, and retreat master, I hear, perhaps more than any other question, the following: “how do I know what God wants?” Put in more formal theological language, this is the question concerning the discernment of God’s will. Many people who pose it tell me that they envy the Biblical heroes—Moses, Jeremiah, Jacob, David, etc.—who seem to have received direct and unambiguous communication from God. I usually remind them that even those great... Read More

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