Category: Tributes
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Remembering My Father — How John Wayne Grew Old
Deal W. Hudson June 6, 2018 He was the strongest man I ever knew. He had will-power of iron. The doctor said to stop smoking. After that day he never smoked another cigarette. Years later a different doctor banned alcohol—not another drink passed his lips for more than thirty years. Of all the money he…
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Julian Green — A Turbulent Passage — from Crisis Magazine, Feb. 1, 1996.
https://www.crisismagazine.com/1996/julian-green-a-turbulent-passage The penultimate volume of Julian Green’s four-part autobiography, anglicized as Love In America, borrows its haunting epigraph from Francois Villon, “In my own country I am in a distant land.” Certainly, no writer’s personal situation was ever more appropriately limned by this striking verse than that of Julian Green. Born ninety-five years ago in…
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The Day a Red Bird Sang St. Thomas Aquinas
Deal W. Hudson January 28, 2016 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. The Danish theologian and philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard…
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Forget ‘Faithful Citizenship’ – What Would Saint Mother Teresa Do?
Deal W. Hudson October 1, 2016 Once upon a time some Catholics who have heard all their lives that abortion is an intrinsic evil and must be opposed took a look at Clinton and Kaine ticket and thought, “There’s no way I can vote for them. They’re both abortion extremists.” They looked at the Trump/Pence…
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Today We Remember the Millions Who Were Killed for Communism
Deal W. Hudson November 7, 2017 One hundred years ago today — Nov. 7, 1917 — the Russian Revolution began in Moscow leading to the creation of a communist state in the former empire of Russia. It’s an anniversary worth thinking about not only for its historical significance but also because of the recent poll of millennials,…
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The 100 Best Catholic Films for Christmas
Deal W. Hudson December 5, 2017 In offering this list, I am not following any theological guidelines, rather I am concerned with those films that display the highest level of artistry in exploring how the birth of Jesus Christ impacted the world, its history, and all who have lived before and after. Thus, I hope that…
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Why Is Tomorrow, or the Next Moment, More Important Than Today, or the Present Moment?
Deal W. Hudson January 11, 2018 My title may seem a bit pretentious, but it poses the central question of Francis O’Gorman’s 2017 book, Forgetfulness: Making the Modern Culture of Amnesia. I interviewed Francis yesterday on ‘Church and Culture,” to be aired this coming weekend, about his rich and unsettling book. Its richness lies in O’Gorman’s…
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Our Trenches, Our Civil War
Deal W. Hudson January 13, 2018 There are no bayonet attacks or cannons firing away into the night, but there are trenches. Take one small town I recently visited in Maryland. “We don’t get invited to any dinner parties, or anything, anymore,” my hostess told me. The street itself is only four short blocks long…
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Sed Contra: Lessons From Two Decades as a Catholic
FEBRUARY 1, 2002 Deal W. Hudson Twenty years ago this month, I was received into the Catholic Church. The late Archbishop Thomas Donellan of Atlanta had given Rev. Richard Lopez permission to perform my confirmation privately. Father Lopez chose the chapel at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, the cancer home run by the Hawthorne Dominican…
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The Spin to Come-The Death of John Paul II
By Deal W. Hudson The television and radio interviews are already taped and waiting to be broadcast. The passing of Pope John Paul II will unleash a media spin on his papacy guaranteed to make you nauseous: This was a pope who cared about the poor but did not engage in dialogue, a pope who…
Deal W. Hudson 