In his masterwork, The Silmarillion, the mythological ground of The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien has this to say concerning death in his imagined world: “But to [men] I will give a new gift.” Therefore [God] willed that the hearts of Men should seek beyond the world and should find
Pope Francis caused no little controversy by revising §2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to assert that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” The problem, of course, is that previous Catholic teaching, including the previous version
If there could be said to be a general diagnostic problem within the reception of the death of God, it is perhaps the interconnection between its originary Nietzschean articulation and the rationalist atheism of the Enlightenment as such. It is certainly true that Nietzsche is expressing a statement of unbelief
Something always happens—an image, a moment, a terror, present one second, escaped the next—and we find ourselves thrust upon the sword of our own creeping mortality. This moment of sharpened clarity occurred to me one evening as my father’s legs gave out. They buckled underneath in rapt unison, balletic and
The Theology of John Dunne, CSC The work of University of Notre Dame’s Fr. John Dunne, CSC has operated as an oppositional springboard for some theologians over the years in the backdrop of contemporary theological interest in desire and its divine circulations. In Theology on the Way to Emmaus, for
On Sunday a small Continuing Anglican congregation will gather in its building for the last time. It will celebrate the Holy Eucharist as a congregation for the last time. Several weeks ago, the congregation voted to disband after meeting for fifteen odd years. It had shrunk to a little more
The city of Milan was in lockdown, at least for those less fortune residents who had no choice but to remain in their homes. The shadow of death was in the air as disease had returned to the northern Italian city. The “new normal” was the cancellation of Carnival, and
Saintly Intercession and the Church Flight—while perhaps native to human beings in danger—ran contrary to the sacramental presence that the Church offered flesh and blood bodies. Church authorities in the Middle Ages were often critical of the flight instinct, urging men and women to stay close to home, to care for