The Dispatch
Easter in autumn
Spring or fall? I’ve never been able to make up my mind as to my favorite season. Spring is my official favorite. The season of new life after the cold, the sleep, the death of […]
Articles by David Paul Deavel
The Dispatch
Desiring the right kind of knowledge in the right way
School is starting, and we need to keep students from curiosity. Curiosity? It sounds bad to modern ears, but ancient and medieval thinkers considered it a vice—a dangerous intellectual habit. You can hear that judgment […]
The Dispatch
Theology is not a trivial pursuit
It shouldn’t be shocking to me anymore, but it was. A “professor of public theology” at a Catholic institution criticized another person on social media encouraging people to evangelize. What was the problem? Was he […]
Essay
A Benedictine spirit for the summer
The summer is now fully upon us. It is the time when many are traveling on vacation and taking part in “leisure” activities. Yet, as many of us have discovered, it can be just as […]
Essay
A truly Catholic approach to “gender studies”
Though June is the month dedicated by many Catholics to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, post-Christians and “liberal” Christians have decided to promote “Pride Month,” a time of celebration and promotion of a very strange […]
The Dispatch
Living out Lent from the power of Easter
Lent is still going. Are you tired yet? Have you cheated on vows to give up this or that luxury? Or perhaps to perform a charitable action or pray more often? The boxer Mike Tyson […]
The Dispatch
Family first? Or the Way of the Cross?
The second volume in the Catholic Women Writers series from Catholic University Press (full disclosure: I am on the series’ advisory board), Sheila Kaye-Smith’s 1923 novel The Fall of the House of Alard, may seem […]
The Dispatch
What to do when temptation seems overwhelming?
Lent is almost here. The Church asks us to make this season one of particular effort to learn holiness’s two aspects: living fully the new life in Christ that began in our baptism and putting […]
The Dispatch
Land of the Once and Ever-Rising Son
Many people know of the successful 16th-century establishment of the Church in Japan by Catholic missionaries, including St. Francis Xavier, and its repression by imperial authorities and eventual complete suppression of the Church by the […]
Essay
“Nothing but you, Lord”: On the death of St. Thomas Aquinas
This year marks the 750th anniversary of the death of Dominican Friar Thomas Aquinas. A Doctor of the Church ranking with the Fathers of the Church in honor and esteem, he died at age 49 […]