I’m Catholic, and I vote. But I don’t get my sample ballot from the Vatican. Don’t get me wrong. I listen to what official church leaders have to say about the issues — about war and peace, about abortion and gay rights, about immigration and...
I walk out the door of my suburban newspaper office, out to the parking lot, in the harsh sunlight of dusk on an early Friday evening. It’s been a long day. It’s been a long summer and autumn. I’m drained and want nothing more than to get in...
“Cloud Atlas,” the 2004 novel by David Mitchell, is a daring book. And, more than three-quarters of the way through its pages, Mitchell includes a daring passage. One of his many (or is it few?) characters, Robert Frobisher, is writing a letter...
In May, 1912, the St. Gertrude parish, where I am now a member, was just five months old, and Sunday mass was being celebrated in a temporary wood-and-steel structure on the site of the present rectory. Six miles to the south, a 15-year-old girl...
Abramin and his two confederates are bandits. Although they’re not exactly Robin Hoods, they live by burglary, not by violence. Abramin and his wife Susanna have a beautiful baby son Dismas. But Dismas is a leper. When Dismas fusses, Abramin...
I’m not sure how to think about miracles. I mean, about what the story of a miracle may mean in my life. But here’s a miracle I can relate to: When Therese healed a little Irish child, she appeared to her as a little child in her First Communion...
Terry Pratchett’s new novel “Dodger” strikes me as his most personal book. He calls it “a historical fantasy…simply for the fun of it.” Yet, it’s much different from the 51 fantasies that he has produced since 1971, including his Discworld...
There is a photo on page 224 of “Measuring America” that, I suspect, anyone who has ever flown across the continental United States west of the Alleghenies will recognize. It’s an aerial view of a few square miles of farmland in South Dakota, but...
Patrick T Reardon © 2019. All rights reserved.
