“To be a Catholic is to be rooted in tradition and anchored in Heaven.” It’s something I say a lot in my writing and interviews and so on. I think it’s rather poetic, to be honest, and it has the added benefit of being true. But what does it actually mean, in practice? Let’s start with what it means—as human beings, as a culture, and...

One of the most impactful books I read in the last 10 years was The Meaning of Blue: Recovering a Contemplative Spirit by Luke Bell, O.S.B.  In that book our contemplative guide has set out for a difficult task: to get Christians to look at the world as if God made it.  Very often, in some sort of deference to the physical sciences (or perhaps ...