The Resurrection Volvo

Just about nine months ago—the Tuesday after Valentine’s Day, to be exact—I hit a carload of nuns. It’s not like I was trying to or anything, though: It was the middle of the morning, a misty winter day. I was driving on a quiet street in the part of Washington, D.C. that’s sometimes called “Little [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/the-resurrection-volvo/

Poetry Friday: “Poverty of Spirit” by Fleda Brown

“Blessed are the poor in spirit.” This beatitude has always puzzled me: what, I’ve wondered, does it mean to be “poor in spirit”? So I was drawn to Fleda Brown’s poem “Poverty of Spirit,” hoping it would elucidate the concept. What I found was a fascinating narrative: of the speaker letting a wagonload of gypsies [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/poetry-friday-poverty-of-spirit-by-fleda-brown/

When the Gate is Shut–A Faithful Response to Vaginismus

Aleteia posted a deeply heartfelt article about a Catholic woman’s struggle with vaginismus, a disorder in which the muscles of the vagina involuntarily spasm or become rigid which makes intercourse either painful or, in extreme cases, impossible. I don’t know anything about the author of the blog referenced in the article, except to say that, [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithonthecouch/2016/10/when-the-gate-is-shut-a-faithful-response-to-vaginismus/

Interview with a Zombie

Halloween costumes and decorations. If I’m a vampire, Pinterest is my garlic. Not only do I cut and paste at a first-grade level but tolerate little more than a basic jack-o-lantern or paper bat in my house. But come September, neighborhood front yards become graveyards. Styrofoam headstones with epitaphs like “I.M. Dead” and “Bone Voyage” [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/interview-with-a-zombie/

The Debate About Beauty

I’ve been engaged in an ongoing wrangle with Gregory Wolfe about the status of Christian intellectuals in the public sphere. We got a bit stuck on the question of T.S. Eliot and the worthiness of New Criticism. Mr. Wolfe has helped to un-stick the conversation with a rather devastating reply to my last post. Pointing [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/the-debate-about-beauty/

A Conversation with Pinckney Benedict

This post originally appeared as a web-exclusive feature accompanying Image journal issue 57. Mary Kenagy Mitchell for Image: You have a novel titled Dogs of God, and in your new story in Image, “The World, the Flesh, and the Devil,” a feral dog is one of the two main characters. What do dogs have to teach [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/a-conversation-with-pinckney-benedict/

Glorying in Flawless Skin and God’s Love

Driving in the car recently, my daughter pulled down the visor in front of her and opened the mirror. Her hair was in a side ponytail draped over her right shoulder. She wore a black and white plaid beret. “I really like this hat and hair thing I have going on today.” “Yes, very cute,” [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/glorying-in-flawless-skin-and-gods-love/

Poetry Friday: “Hive Boxes” by Megan Snyder-Camp

The sounds in this poem! I love its compactness and humming—its slender shape on the page, just like a tower of hive boxes. Bookended by two phrases that particularly sing—“lit hum” and “known oak”—this poem concentrates its gaze on the compelling paradoxes alive in our world, visible and audible in those very phrases. The hive [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/poetry-friday-hive-boxes-by-megan-snyder-camp/

Peter the “Rock”: Protestant Contra-Catholic Exegetical Bias

St. Peter (1326), by Simone Martini (1285-1344) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons] *** (7-7-09) *** Matthew 16:18 (RSV) And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. This curious phenomenon was one of the central themes of my [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2016/10/peter-the-rock-protestant-contra-catholic-exegetical-bias.html

A Conversation with John Terpstra

This interview originally appeared as a web-exclusive feature for Image issue 63. John Terpstra has been in church since before he was born. “I have heard everything there is to say about the place, for and against; both its necessity and its redundancy. Have felt it all, in my bones,” he writes. Issue 63 of [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/a-conversation-with-john-terpstra/

Reading (in) Walden

What are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave.… To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise…. [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/reading-in-walden/

Relation of Baptism to Baptism of Desire

The Good Thief on the Cross, by Jacopo Bassano (1510-1592) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons] *** (3-3-07) *** A certain Protestant objection is made that Catholics make baptism necessary for salvation, so that if someone doesn’t receive baptism they are necessarily damned, and that this is the Council of Trent’s teaching (Canons on the Sacrament [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2016/10/relation-of-baptism-to-baptism-of-desire.html

Further Thoughts on Communion in the Hand

My daughter Angelina on the day of her first Holy Communion at our beautiful church, St. Joseph’s, in Detroit (7-24-11). *** (6-20-13) *** [this is a follow-up to my earlier paper, Thoughts on Communion in the Hand] ***** [I’ve written many times about this; also about abuses in the use of eucharistic ministers; see the papers [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2016/10/further-thoughts-on-communion-in-the-hand.html

Creative Tension in the White Imagination

Tension Isn’t Usually Pretty A Facebook video shows a deputy sheriff getting in the face of a young black protester attempting to access the courthouse lawn in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. The young man keeps his cool, insisting their intentions are merely to pray peacefully, but the deputy isn’t interested. He just wants them to [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/creative-tension-in-the-white-imagination/

Traveling Through These Days of Awe

I’m in a plane ascending to 37,000 feet. How restless have I been this year? How easily distractible? Already on this flight, from the time of boarding the plane until now, I’ve jumped from e-mail to Facebook to FiveThirtyEight to Jane Hirshfield on Basho to Mishkan Hanefesh, Sanctuary of the Soul, the Reform movement’s new [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/traveling-through-these-days-of-awe/

Dialogue w Mike Maturen: 3rd Party Candidate

President Theodore Roosevelt: the most famous 3rd party presidential candidate. He ran on the “Bull Moose” (or, Progressive) Party ticket in 1912, and received 27% of the votes, to President William Howard Taft’s 23%, and Woodrow Wilson’s 42%. This was the best 3rd party result ever, and the only time a 3rd party got more [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2016/10/dialogue-w-mike-maturen-3rd-party-candidate.html

Poetry Friday: “Nothing More” by Todd Davis

Whenever I first meet a long skinny poem, I ask myself: Why has the poet chosen these very brief lines for the poem’s shape? In Todd Davis’s “Nothing More,” the effect of these short lines is a sort of staccato: short phrases punched out in succession and often snapped by startling line breaks. Yet what [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/poetry-friday-nothing-more-by-todd-davis/

A Conversation with Scott Cairns

This post originally appeared as web-exclusive content in Image issue 68. Scott Cairns, the author of numerous volumes of poetry, a convert to Orthodox Christianity, and a longtime contributor to Image, has often advocated what he calls a “sacramental poetics”—the idea that a poem should not so much describe something as do something. Mary Kenagy Mitchell interviewed Scott Cairns [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/a-conversation-with-scott-cairns/

66% of Kids On ADHD Meds Don’t Have ADHD, Says Scientific American

According to the American Psychiatric Association, about 5 percent of American children suffer from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), yet the diagnosis is given to some 15 percent of American children, many of whom are placed on powerful drugs with lifelong consequences. This is the central fact of the journalist Alan Schwarz’s new book, ADHD Nation. [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithonthecouch/2016/10/66-of-kids-on-adhd-meds-dont-have-adhd-says-scientific-american/

Parting the Veil

The light on the ceiling of our bedroom is slanted in a parody of the open doorway, letting in the blue glow of a nightlight from the hall. This nightly and usually innocuous shape hides something in the darkness tonight; I see it creeping in the light box, plotting something against me, about to attack. [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/parting-the-veil/

When Every Child is Left Behind: Teaching “Stupid Faith”

My latest for OSV (online now and in the 10/16 print edition) Catholic children as young as 10 years old are renouncing God and quitting Church, claims a new study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown.  According to lead researcher Mark Gray, children are finding that faith is “incompatible” [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithonthecouch/2016/10/when-every-child-is-left-behind-teaching-stupid-faith/

Art, Icons, and Ant Ovaries

“A world created out of silence gives itself over to prayer.” I’m listening to local painter Debra Korluka discuss her work: the icons she’s painted since she was a child studying in the Ukrainian Orthodox church. I’m interested in the symbolism of an icon’s composition and in the paints—their colors, chemistry, poisons, and history. All [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/art-icons-and-ant-ovaries/

In (Partial) Defense of William Jennings Bryan (Famous “Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial” of 1925)

William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) as a young man [public domain / Wikimedia Commons] *** (6-6-09) *** [Note: a few years after I wrote this, I was able to visit the famous courthouse in Dayton, Tennessee] ***** I don’t think Bryan was so much a “pseudo-intellectual” as he was simply ignorant of biblical exegesis and the [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2016/10/in-partial-defense-of-william-jennings-bryan-famous-scopes-monkey-trial-of-1925.html

Pastoral Solutions Institute Seeks New Catholic Counselor to Join Team

The Pastoral Solutions Institute is pleased to announce that we are expanding and seeking a new Catholic therapist to join our team of professional Catholic counselors.  If you are interested, please read the following carefully. About the Institute Founded by Dr. Greg Popcak in 1999, the Pastoral Solutions Institute is a Catholic behavioral tele-health practice providing [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithonthecouch/2016/10/pastoral-solutions-institute-seeks-new-catholic-counselor-to-join-team/

Elegy for My Father

My father: Roy Franklin Harmon, Jr., M.D., passed away on September 22, 2016 at the age of eighty-seven. He was the best man I will ever know. Difficult as it was, my mother wanted me to say something at his funeral service that would at least attempt to encapsulate something of his character. I chose [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/elegy-for-my-father/

The Bible’s Teaching on Abortion

[Flickr / CC BY 2.0 license] (3-8-09) *** [all verses: RSV. Passages in blue are not included in my book, Bible Proofs for Catholic Truths; and the Bible version in the book is KJV rather than RSV] *** FULL PERSONHOOD OF THE CHILD IN THE WOMB * Genesis 16:11 And the angel of the LORD [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2016/10/the-bibles-teaching-on-abortion.html

Poetry Friday: “Intercession: For My Daughter” by Brett Foster

We pass into this world at birth. We pass out of it at death. And in between: holiness and horrors. This is probably the largest of themes that a poet could take on, and in “Intercession: For My Daughter” Brett Foster wraps his mind and language around it with consummate craft. First, to keep us [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/poetry-friday-intercession-for-my-daughter-by-brett-foster/

Abortion as a Deal-Breaker & Ethical Voting

Armenian genocide, 1915 [public domain / Pinterest] *** (9-10-08 and 2-22-14: after the five asterisks) ***** One always hears this charge about pro-lifers being “one-issue” voters, as if this is a negative, undesirable, immediately discounting, disqualifying thing. The fact is, that there are many individual issues — not just support for legal childkilling — that [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2016/10/abortion-as-a-deal-breaker-ethical-voting.html

The Day My Daughter Found Herself

I want you to watch me run. My daughter Becca sent me that text last Friday morning, just a couple hours into her first “24-Hour Challenge.” For weeks she’d been anticipating the annual event at her middle school, during which students run ten miles in half-mile installments around the track, breaking to sleep (or at [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/the-day-my-daughter-found-herself/

Physical Exercise May Be Best Treatment for ADHD

The Atlantic reports on a new study published this morning in the journal Pediatrics. …kids who took part in a regular physical activity program showed important enhancement of cognitive performance and brain function. The findings, according to University of Illinois professor Charles Hillman and colleagues, “demonstrate a causal effect of a physical program on executive [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithonthecouch/2016/10/physical-exercise-may-be-best-treatment-for-adhd/

The Art of Steve Prince

This post originally appeared as web-exclusive content in Image issue 78. Steve Prince, a New Orleans native, works primarily in printmaking and drawing. His richly textured images are steeped in religious and visual culture; critic D. Eric Bookhardt characterizes their metaphorical power as “an ability to elucidate inexplicable worlds within worlds.” Prince’s recent work includes [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/the-art-of-steve-prince/

Luther Refutes Protestant Deniers of the Real Presence

All Saints’ Church, Wittenberg, Germany (built between 1490 and 1511), where Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door [Wikimedia Commons /  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license] ***** From my book, The Catholic Verses: 95 Bible Passages That Confound Protestants (Sophia Institute Press: 2004) ***** . . . [Martin Luther] believed in the Real Presence, although [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2016/10/luther-refutes-protestant-deniers-of-the-real-presence.html

On Apologists’ Income: “High” & Low (My Case)

1 Timothy 5:18 (RSV): “for the scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain,’ and, ‘The laborer deserves his wages.'” Detail from Labor mural in lunette from the Family and Education series by Charles Sprague Pearce (1851-1914) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons] *** [2-22-14; a few additions and [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2016/10/on-apologists-income-high-low-my-case.html

Why I am Fed Up With Internet Discussion

[Pexels.com / CC0 public domain license] *** [10-10-03; rev. 1-20-04 and 10-4-16] ***** [I have again revised — mostly shortening — this paper from my extensive archives. It was originally directed towards “Internet Discussion Boards” and was written before I had a blog (2004)  — I had had a website since 1997 — and before [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2016/10/why-i-am-fed-up-with-internet-discussion.html

Secular Media Finally Admits: “The Pill” Causes Depression & Relationship Problems

Despite a new Pew survey reporting that only 4% of Americans and 13% of weekly Mass attending Catholics in the US think that contraception is morally wrong,  “the Pill” is getting belated, but well-deserved, bad press from surprising sources. Harvard psychology professor and Playboy Magazine columnist, Dr. Justin Lehmiller, is reporting on research I mentioned the [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithonthecouch/2016/10/secular-media-finally-admits-the-pill-causes-depression-relationship-problems/

Thank You, Black Southern Belles

In the twenty-plus years since the Internet became a feature of our lives, there have emerged a couple of articles of conventional wisdom that I, for one, find pretty dubious. First, there’s the claim that “everything on the Internet lasts forever,” usually made in reference to warnings about the dangers of teen “sexting,” or work [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/thank-you-black-southern-belles/

T.S. Eliot, Agent of His Own Demise

In my last post for Good Letters, I took minor issue with a point my friend and mentor Gregory Wolfe made about the relative prominence of Christian public intellectuals around the middle of the last century. Wolfe named, as examples of such prominence, Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, Allen Tate, T.S. Eliot, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Paul [Read More...]

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/2016/10/t-s-eliot-agent-of-his-own-demise/