essays

[National Review Online; June 22, 2007]

 
On January 23, 2002, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped on the streets of Karachi, Pakistan. Some weeks later a horrifying videotape arrived, documenting that he had been beheaded. In those intervening days, his wife Mariane and a team of friends and investigators tried desperately to find him, adding up the scarce clues that might enable them to save his life. It was nightmarish in a way we can hardly imagine. “A Mighty Heart” gives us a 100-minute tour of that nightmare.

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[Review of Faith and International Affairs; Summer 2007]
 

“It was during this part that the majority of us tried to kill ourselves.”

 
They buried my spiritual father last November. I have never seen a body in a casket look so not-there; the indistinct pale husk he left behind looked like something a breeze could lift up and carry away. It was the contrast, I suppose. Few people in life are as radiant and vigorous as Fr. George Calciu, or as full of joy. He was a few days short of his 81st birthday, still full-time pastor of a church in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, still traveling world-wide to those who sought him as a teacher and spiritual father, still diligently reaching out to the poor and unchurched around him.

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[Beliefnet, June 14, 2007]

“If I marry Bill it must be with open eyes,” a 21-year-old Ruth Bell wrote in her diary. “After the joy of knowing that I am his by rights and his forever, I will slip into the background.”

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My podcast, “Frederica Here and Now,” is carried by AncientFaithRadio; for it, I record short pieces based on conversations and ideas I have as I move through the week. Here’s the link to subscribe: just scroll down.