I have long desired a wilder Catholicism—bygone, primitive, a bit off-kilter. What I have wanted, prayed for, and preached in hope of is that sort of Christianity we read about mostly now in books. Thirty years ago, for instance, William Dalrymple in From the Holy Mountain wrote about stylites, how
The novel The Damnation of Theron Ware, published in 1896, unspools the tale of a young Methodist minister who, thanks to Catholics, science, bohemianism, and good old American pragmatism, loses his faith. Yes, Reverend Theron Ware was vulnerable, no doubt. His pride, limited intellectual, spiritual and social background as well
Americans struggle to understand the nature of Catholicism. In the U.S. context, religion is often understood as a strictly private affair. On Sundays, we go to church (or at least we once did, before many people stopped going to church at all). Such attendance, of course, is an optional dimension of
Michael Sean Winters: Part 1 of a review of Our Dear-Bought Liberty by Michael Breidenbach, who argues that Catholic experience and thought laid groundwork for the U.S. constitutional separation of church and state. National Catholic Reporter – The Independent News Source