Lana Del Rey was born Elizabeth Woolridge Grant and raised Catholic in upstate New York. She learned to sing in her parish choir, and later studied philosophy briefly at Fordham University. She then invented the name and persona of Lana Del Ray and began producing eclectic pop songs that were thick with old Hollywood glamor […]
Christians contend that theology can be harmonized with science. Both disciplines pursue the same object—truth—and by that common object are unified. Even methodologically, science and religion are complementary. As Pope St. John Paul II duly observed, “Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.” Among the […]
“Where are you?” God’s question to Adam and Eve in Eden is directed to all of us too. Like the first humans in Genesis, we have all at some point tried to hide ourselves from the presence of the Lord. The rabbinic tradition has much commentary on God’s question to Adam that is particularly relevant […]
“Be careful with the pages, Daddy.” I looked at her and smiled. She looked back and raised her eyebrows to remind me that she was serious. It was time to prepare Annabel for the next day’s eighth-grade religion quiz. As I flitted from one page to the next in her immaculately penciled spiral-bound notebook, I […]
G.K. Chesterton once said that his umbrella helped reveal to him why he knew the Catholic Church was for him. He said that whenever he went to non-Catholic churches, he would customarily leave his umbrella by the back door during the worship service. In these churches, his umbrella would always be there waiting for him […]
On this Good Friday, I am taken back to a cold, gray morning a few weeks ago. I stood alone at the curb at Dallas Fort Worth Airport, shivering in a light jacket, and feeling hemmed in by the endless concrete of the terminal and the parking garage on each side of me. Other travelers, […]
It has been my privilege to have made two memorable visits to the Holy Land. Each visit, each place I went, left its mark on my faith, but in both cases, the greatest impact and spiritual intensity came during visits to the Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem. During my first visit with a group of […]
The day before Palm Sunday, a few years back, I was in the confessional feeling the weight of my sins and just exhausted from the demands of young motherhood with three little ones under the age of five. I think the priest could hear the weariness in my voice, because he reminded me, “The Resurrection […]
Creation points back to its Creator. Just as something of the composer is revealed in his symphony and something of the artist is revealed in his painting, so also is God, in an indirect but real way, revealed in his divine handiwork. The revelatory clues found in nature tell us more than just the fact […]
Every year, I go through a list of films and miniseries about the life of Christ that I want to watch, or avoid, to prepare for Holy Week and Easter. There are many options. After all, cinematic depictions of the life of Christ are as old as film itself. Some of the earliest were the […]