Silencing the Man, Not His Message

Silencing the Man, Not His Message

I was sitting in my dorm room in Taiwan on a warm autumn day in 2009 when I found out that President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. Little did I know that, a year later, someone living just 80 miles away would receive that very same honor. Liu Xiaobo (Xiaobo...
Why the Spadaro/Figueroa Article is Divisive

Why the Spadaro/Figueroa Article is Divisive

Be sure to check out Danny Gustafson’s counterpoint to this essay! While the reaction to the recent Civiltà Cattolica article by Fr. Antonio Spadaro, S.J. and Rev. Marvelo Figueroa has been incredibly diverse, analysts as diverse as First Things (especially...
Everything is (NOT) Satisfactual

Everything is (NOT) Satisfactual

Do you know what movie the iconic song “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” is from? Or what movie Disneyland’s Splash Mountain is based on? If you answered no, Disney has succeeded in hiding its most offensive film, Song of the South. Song of the South is set on a southern plantation...
Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There

Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There

“Your disease has a downward trajectory,” said the doctor to the man. The former was among the best cancer doctors at one of the best cancer hospitals in the world. The latter was a man a few years shy of 60, no longer young but not yet old. An awkward silence opened...
Sweating It Out

Sweating It Out

Jumping out of my lofted bed in half-panic, I turn off the wailing alarm. The elusive peace from the silence is replaced by fatigue and dread. It’s 6am on this mid-January morning in Iowa. My school bag and duffel bag full of sweats are ready to go; all I have to do...
Dunkirk: A Different Day at the Beach

Dunkirk: A Different Day at the Beach

In Dunkirk, director Christopher Nolan tells the story of the 1940 British evacuation from France at the outset of World War II. The film, which cleverly plays with converging timelines, focuses on a soldier on the beach (played by Fionn Whitehead), the harried naval...
Millennial Wanderlust & the Pilgrim Saint

Millennial Wanderlust & the Pilgrim Saint

Ignatius lived over five hundred years ago in a time before computers, before cars, before the steam engine, before the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. The printing press had been invented, but literacy was practically nonexistent. It was a time of nobles,...