After our baby, Beatrice, was born, I wrote a piece for the Institute for Family Studies on children as natural born interruptors, including of some of our culture's mistaken expectations about time. We can deceive ourselves (at least for a little while) about our limits and our control—by staying up too late to finish something… Read More
Category: Articles
The Fourth Turning and America’s Demons
Will Arbery's play Heroes of the Fourth Turning was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (and oddly reminiscent of late nights with my college friends—though the protagonists hang out in a backyard, not on a roof). I reviewed it for The American Interest. The praise for the show has frequently taken Teresa’s world-historical perspective—the show is remarkable because these… Read More
Your Roots Shall Make Ye Free
I reviewed Michael Brennan Dougherty's epistolary memoir, My Father Left Me Ireland, for The American Interest. Dougherty's rage is directed at the eunuchizing modern mindset that sees us as most free when we can be stripped of all the ties we have to others. A father can leave his children, provided the financial pain is assuaged by child support or governmental… Read More
Fear and the Benedict Option
Any sort of retreat will also attract people who are tempted to hate the part of the world they are withdrawing from. Any group gathering in a BenOp spirit should expect to attract people at varying levels of weariness, anger, fear, and despair. Even a legitimate righteous anger can curdle into contempt or despair. To… Read More
Hope of Heaven in Hadestown
I reviewed Hadestown, the 2019 Best Musical, for The American Interest. Hermes, the messenger-god who serves as narrator, warns us that “When the gods are having a fight, everybody else better hold on tight.” The world that Orpheus and Eurydice inhabit is wounded and weakened by the faltering love between Hades and Persephone. (This production does not… Read More
Pro-Life Outreach to Pro-Choice Workers
I travelled to Texas to interview Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood Clinic director who founded And Then There Were None, a ministry to help abortion workers leave their jobs. “Unplanned,” the recently released film adapted from Abby Johnson’s memoir of leaving Planned Parenthood and becoming a pro-life activist, is really just a prequel.When Johnson quit her job in 2009,… Read More
The Cruel Warning Signs of Abuse
I've written an essay for the Catholic News Agency, on abuse inside and outside the Catholic Church. McCarrick, Han, and Ronnell all carried out parts of their abuse in the open. Their campaigns of control and cruelty may not have always created the trail of evidence needed to convict them of a crime, but there… Read More
Care for the Dying is the Last Hospitality
In Sarah Ruhl’s For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday, death is an idea we have to sneak up on. The play imagines that five children are gathering to help their father die well and to navigate the aftermath. [...] As their father moans and moves, but does not speak, the siblings disagree, with patience and… Read More
Killing Tyranny with Kindness in The Winter’s Tale
No villain ruins Leontes but himself—no wicked daughters deceive him with flattery, no Iago drips poison in his ear. In an instant he becomes convinced, despite the lack of evidence, that his wife Hermione has become the lover of King Polixenes of Bohemia, his dear friend. As he spirals into self-sustaining despair, Leontes becomes a… Read More
Summer in the Forest: “The Weak Lead Us To Reality”
Summer in the Forest, Randall Wright’s documentary on Jean Vanier and his L’Arche communities for the disabled, contains a number of indelible moments. In one, an elderly man sits, docilely, for a haircut. As a younger worker clips his hair, he holds out his knobbled hand and receives the milkweed-silk trimmings in his palm. The… Read More