A young nonwhite woman in graduate studies – at my university, but not in my department – told me how maddening she found it that none of her teachers or advisors would give her any constructive feedback no matter how she pleaded for it.  Everything she did was great, fine, wonderful.  It was as though she could do no wrong.

Here is a little secret that you can get cancelled for telling:  So called sex change doesn’t change sex.

There is another pandemic, far worse than the coronavirus, a plague of cultural insanity.  At present I am not trying to argue the point, but speaking to the multitude who already know.  The superspreaders of the plague don’t see themselves as crazy, and they have a lot of power to do harm.

Judges and lawyers tend to think that some systems of absolute commitment and belief are religions and others aren’t.  Anthropologists would laugh at this idea.  In the broad sense, they all are.  The important thing is what kind they are.

I received this letter at the beginning of autumn, when the Covid regulatory regime was somewhat stricter.  We have had vaccines for some time, the Omicron variant seems much milder, and recovery from it seems to provide some protection against more serious strains.  Nevertheless, restrictions are tightening again, so the exchange may still be of interest.

The Fathers of the Church don’t say much about the New Year, because there is no such day on the liturgical calendar.  For the Western Church today, the first day of January is the Solemnity of Mary, a feast day commemorating and honoring the great blessing to us of her motherhood.