Posts by Jim McDermott
Billy Joel’s Weaponized Nostalgia and Spiritual Truth
I’m not sure what I thought pop culture would be like when my generation got into middle age. I certainly didn’t expect it would be dominated by ideas and figures from my 1980s childhood released into the wild again and again like some monstrous zombie army, hungry for our eyeballs and the reanimated feels of…
Read MoreFilms That Show the Reality of Trans People
This year’s Tribeca Film Festival featured two documentaries about the experience of being transgender in the United States right now. Their subjects are radically different: State of Firsts follows Delaware’s transgender congresswoman Sarah McBride as she runs for Congress. Meanwhile Just Kids tells the story of three trans children and their families as they grapple…
Read MoreUnitas, Caritas, Veritas: Understanding the Augustinian Spirituality of Pope Leo XIV
In the weeks since American Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected Pope Leo XIV, he’s returned more than once to a few key concepts. “I would like our first great desire to be for a united church,” he said in the homily at his installation Mass, “a sign of unity and communion which becomes a leaven…
Read MoreUncle Bob
When I was working on my story last month about Denzel Washington’s work while a student at Fordham and now on Broadway in Othello, I kept running across the name of a theater professor: Robert Stone. He had been one of Washington’s acting teachers and the two performed together in Fordham’s production of Othello. Stone,…
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