Journalist – Historian – Speaker
Here’s a very brief Twitter discussion with Julia Baird. She wrote a lovely piece for the NYTimes the other day about Queen Victoria (I blogged here). Twitter is a medium that encourages quick hits, but this is just not correct. Mindboggling debate over whether an ancient papyrus proved Jesus had a wife. http://t.co/Wi9b0hVt6m — Dame …
The following is a genuine email exchange. Names and locations have been changed as appropriate. ——————————————————————–From: J. [NAME@hotmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2013 11:52 AM To: Perry, David Subject: Your beautiful article on pope Francis on cnn.com Thanks David for a very well written article on the pope. First big surprise: It is written in …
Somehow I missed this story from a few weeks ago: A few weeks ago I wrote about Pope Francis removing the “Bishop of Bling,” a German Bishop known for his expensive lifestyle, from his diocese. Here’s the update (now a few days old): Francis orders the multi-million dollar (euro!) home to be used to serve …
“Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?” The pope stares at me in silence. I ask him if this is a question that I am allowed to ask…. He nods that it is, and he tells me: “I do not know what might be the most fitting description…. I am a sinner. This is the most accurate …
I am an academic. When I write scholarship, I use footnotes. When I write op-eds, I use links. Links make me feel more confident as a writer as they leave my sources transparent. Sites like CNN use the links for fact-check, but then the editors often remove some or all of them. This is fine …
Every time I write about Catholicism, a certain set of commentators immediately invoke the child sex abuse scandals regardless of the issue at hand. This is particularly true if you say something positive about any aspect of the church. Given Pope Francis’ well-publicized and generally well-received comments, especially by people generally opposed to the church …
One thing we learn from the history of the Crusades (and I think one of the core arguments of Jay Rubenstein’s work) – when military figures view contemporary events through an apocalyptic lens, we’ve got a recipe for extra special kinds of disaster. The influence of apocalyptic thinkers on the Bush White House always concerned …
In a recent New Yorker piece on the late SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, Nicholas Schmidle writes, Like many soldiers, Kyle was deeply religious and saw the Iraq War through that prism. He tattooed one of his arms with a red crusader’s cross, wanting “everyone to know I was a Christian.” When he learned that insurgents …
John 19:23 Vulgate – Milites ergo cum crucifixissent eum, acceperunt vestimenta ejus (et fecerunt quatuor partes, unicuique militi partem) et tunicam. Erat autem tunica inconsutilis, desuper contexta per totum. NIV – When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining. This …
Theodicy is the theological practice of trying to make sense of why bad things happen to good people. It was coined by the famous German polymath Leibniz, but was a common practice throughout the history of medieval thought as well in various ways. I am working on an essay on the topic of American theodicy. …