In Chicago, all public Catholic Masses have been cancelled for duration of the coronavirus emergency. So, starting this past Saturday and Sunday, for the first time ever, all of the churches in the archdiocese are dark, open, if at all, only for...
Eight of Terry Pratchett’s 41 Discworld novels center on the City Watch of Anhk-Morpork. The first was Guards! Guards! (1989), followed by Men at Arms (1993) and, then, by Feet of Clay (1996). The last of the eight was published in 2011, four...
Among Terry Pratchett’s 41 Discworld novels, Men at Arms, published in 1993, is one of the best. That’s saying a lot. Pratchett’s books are always great fun, filled with wit, satire and wise insights into those creatures called human beings, in a...
Friends called Johnny Hernandez “Slugger,” he was such a good baseball player. In the fall of 1946, the thirteen-year-old, a recent graduate of St. Francis of Assisi elementary school on Chicago’s Near West Side, went on a Boys’ Club camping trip...
To be precise, it was the Renaissance in the 15th and 16th centuries that was the major “swerve” of European history — away from the church-dominated, faith-dominated, feudal Middle Ages and, ultimately, toward Modernity, a period that has...
Communion of saints By Patrick T. Reardon Under the red Christmas tree, she arranges a communion of saints. In the DMV line, a communion of saints: two teenagers in love. A communion of saints, electric...
Maybe I should have a disclaimer at the start of this review. I’m afraid this may be unfair to Geraldine McCaughrean and her re-telling of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. My only excuse is that I am using her book to talk about a larger...
I was born in the desert By Patrick T. Reardon (1) In the desert, I was thrice tempted. I was offered two stones to eat and five rushes. Atop the Temple, I was offered my stolid submission. In my heart, I was offered a...
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