George Lucas’s “Star Wars” has spawned a multi-billion dollar industry, including sequels, prequels and a limitless array of paraphernalia. It’s a juggernaut that shows no sign of abating. Few ideas have captured the popular imagination quite the way it has. National missile

An unusual amount of hot air suffused the American atmosphere this past August. I’m not referring to the wildfires in the West, but to the Republican and Democratic national conventions. Though less noteworthy, the conventions garnered more media attention, because when all was said (and said

One of the most beautiful and symbolic gestures of the Catholic faith occurs when a person is unable to get to church to participate in the Eucharist and the parish sends one of its members to that person with a consecrated host. The hunger must be satisfied. Without community a person is alone; wit

Dust coated my throat and stung my eyes. Carbon monoxide fumes mixed with the reek of deep-fried buffalo wings and cheese-soaked sausages made me nauseous. The noise was deafening—a nonstop cacophony of roaring engines, heavy metal music and over-amplified voices distorted through a second-rat

Jesuit education fomented in me a rebellious mind and spirit. It forever altered my frame of reference: introducing a Catholic boy who lived safe in the knowledge of good and evil to a catholic worldview that held that all things are gifts from God, and transforming a basically docile open-mindednes

I’m not sure what to do with the Easter season. I’m more comfortable, if that’s the right word, with Lent’s symbolic richness—dust, ashes, desert, wandering—than I am with the joy of the resurrection. Not surprisingly, at this time every year I’m less jubila

Every chance I get, I read. But why? For many reasons, of course: to educate myself, for aesthetic pleasure, to gather information and, underlying all the rest, out of a deeply ingrained sense of duty. I suppose a sense of duty is wrapped up in almost everything I do, including reading. Like any pro

I’ve seen two movies in recent days that I can’t shake. Both are late-1960’s films about a stranger in a hostile and unfamiliar place who, through an unlikely relationship, discovers unknown darkness and lightin himself and in others. My emotional response to each movie was contrad

This past year my wife and I grew weary of the vertiginous dance of dual-career parenting. In the end, I decided to surrender the professorial life in order to pursue nonacademic writing and be with my kids, who are one and three. Everyone has been very supportive: "You’re doing the right

At this time every year I’m remindedas gently as the onset of a hurricanethat sports and hype are preternaturally synonymous nowadays. Akin to a national religious holiday, Super Sunday is a festive farrago of the American spirit. Super Bowl parties abound, veritable melting pots. Rich and poo