Author: Beth Haile

Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso has a new pastoral letter, released Tuesday, encouraging the faithful to go beyond politics in the immigration debate, to actually encounter the immigrants around them, to hear their stories and to view them as humans and not as a mere political debate. The document, entitled Sorrow and Mourning Flee Away, ocuses in a large part on the “power of ‘encuentro’”. “While the teaching of the Church on migration is rich and persuasive, sometimes nothing can substitute for personal experience.” He goes on to describe his own encounters with migrants, arguing that for us,...

I recently read Patricia Lockwood’s memoir Priestdaddy. Lockwood is a poet with a unique backstory—her father is an ordained Catholic priest. My original intention for picking up the memoir was to gain insights into what it might be like to have married priests with families. Lockwood doesn’t give us much in the regard. Her father is almost a caricature, not a real person. He is overweight, fiercely conservative, spending his time at home in his study lounging in his underwear and listening to Rush Limbaugh and watching football. When his adult children and grandchildren visit, he makes a five...

This summer, a group of Catholic homeschooling moms in my mid-sized middle-America town are getting together to read Beauty in World: Rethinking the Foundations of Education, by Stratford Caldecott, a book that explores the history and ongoing relevance of a liberal education to not only educate, but humanize. I know many of these moms from my monthly Well-Read Mom book club, which is a national group that encourages re-encountering (or encountering for the first time) classic literature. This year, we read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Death of Ivan Illych, Screwtape Letters, and Wuthering Heights, among others. When...