I am rather fond of my native land and her robust and quirky republican traditions, but Jesus did not preach democracy nor endorse any particular political philosophy.

It is not selfish to do what you are good at and then to show a degree of humility about other things—including politics and other fields of expertise.

The display at the Olympics was not innocent fun gone too far or Europeans just being artsy. It was bullying a minority.

An e-Eucharist can be unsacramental and even anti-sacramental.

The liturgies of Lent and Easter, like the churches themselves, are built upon the conviction that the resurrection changes everything.

Couldn’t it be apple juice instead of wine? Isn’t it the principle that matters? It could, of course, but then we would lose everything.

No place in the world has such a talent for rebuilding what once seemed lost as Rome.

I suppose there is a line of thought in Christianity that would equate the cheap and mean with holiness, but somehow Catholicism has always found room for both Michelangelo and Mother Teresa.

The freshness and wonder, the way that what was there before still exists but is now shot through with newness. The city glitters. Why not? Lent is the season of baptismal preparation as much as penance.

Before long I had tears in my eyes—and not from the uneven grooves worn into the wood by pilgrims’ knees. Something about the physical discomfort helped me to focus on the much greater pain Jesus had felt on those same stairs.