Category: Personal
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A Video Interview About Jacques Maritain
In 1993 James and Tyra Arraj interviewed me about the French philosopher Jacques Maritain as part of their excellent documentary, “Understanding Maritain: The Man Who Loved Wisdom.” I was teaching at Fordham University at the time and had been president of the American Maritain Association for several years. The first book I had published was…
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After 15 Years-Adoption: A Love Story
Note: Cyprian Joseph Hudson will be graduating from high school on June 18, 2016. The doctors who examined him after he arrived in the US over fifteen years ago told us that he would never get that far. By Deal W. Hudson I was relaxing in my favorite armchair and watching golf when my daughter,…
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Don’t Call Me a Conservative Catholic Anymore!
By Deal W. Hudson Labels in politics and religion serve a purpose: There are discernible groups and coalitions within and between the worlds of the Church and government. Words used as labels serve the purpose of enabling us to distinguish between one group and the other. But I don’t want to be called a “Conservative…
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Why I Can Be Friends With Liberals, Democrats, and Pro-Aborts
By Deal W. Hudson I’m writing this in response to comments made over the years about friendships I’ve maintained with persons who are diametrically opposed to many of my core values. Most of these comments have the tone of disapproval, others just sound flummoxed with me. Let me say from the start that my reason…
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How the Beatles, My Great Aunt, and Debussy Changed My Life
By Deal W. Hudson It was the spring of 1970 when Paul McCartney announced he was leaving the Beatles. I had already grown discontent with pop music, the frenetic discord of Jimmy Hendrix touched no part of a young man brought up on Nat King Cole, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Frank Sinatra, and Broadway show…
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The Day a Red Bird Sang St. Thomas Aquinas
I was coming to the end of my first year as a college professor at Mercer University Atlanta. I was still a Southern Baptist though I had been wrestling with that affiliation since being introduced to St. Augustine at Princeton Theological Seminary. One of the greatest Protestant theologians, Soren Kierkegaard, had provided the base motif…
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My Son, The Gorilla!
By Deal W. Hudson Golf prepared me for manhood. My Dad made sure of it. “This is my son, the gorilla,” he would say to his buddies on the first tee of Ridglea Country Club in Ft. Worth. “He can hit it a hundred miles.” For a kid of 12 or 13, that’s plenty of…
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I Am About to Snap!
By Deal W. Hudson I am 66 years old, and I am about to snap. Do you even need to ask, “Why?” As I watch our nation engrossed in a debate over the morality of bathroom selection, I cannot recognize the place where I was born, raised, lived my life. I feel that I’m living…
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Fill the Basket Before Dinner!
Deal W. Hudson It was too pretty, and evocative, a late fall day, to watch football or pursue any other indoor pastime. Without thinking much about it, I grabbed an old pillow case full of golf balls, my hickory niblick, a laundry bag and headed for the front yard. The grass was still green there,…
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At Mass with Saint John Paul the Great
Deal W Hudson I never thought I would be part of a cheering, waving crowd. After all, I thought myself too old, too sophisticated. Then John Paul II walked out on the stage. It was his Wednesday public audience, and together with my family and six friends I sat only a few rows from the…
Deal W. Hudson 