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Vittore Carpaccio’s “St. Augustine in His Study” (1502, tempera on canvas). JD Vance used the idea of the *ordo amoris*, or ordering of love that Augustine expounded on in defense of nationalism on Fox News. His interpretation was rejected by Pope Leo XIV, an Augustinian friar.

J.D. Vance's concentric circles of love

May 25, 2025

Now that Pope Leo XIV has hit the ground running — and done some fence-mending, albeit stiffly, with Vice President JD Vance and the Trump Administration — the Memorial Day weekend is a good moment to look at the overcomplicated idea that created the Trump-Vatican rift in the first place.

The poster for “Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light,” now airing on PBS’ “Masterpiece.” Its story of power and glittering doom in Tudor England holds up a mirror to our own mirthless times.

The mirror, not the light -- royal dramas in the age of Trump

April 6, 2025

“Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” — Shakespeare, “Henry IV, Part 2”

“Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light” and “Marie Antoinette” — airing back to back on PBS’ WNET-Channel 13 on Sunday nights — give us two kings in crisis as seen through the eyes of two insiders who will soon be axed.

The Broadway cast of “Six.” From left, Najah Hetsberger as Catherine of Aragon; Gianna Yanelli as Anne Boleyn, Kelsie Watts as Jane Seymour, Krystal Hernandez as Anne of Cleves, Kay Sibal as Katherine Howard and Taylor Marie Daniel as Catherine Parr. Photograph by Georgette Gouveia.

Pawns to queens in a game of love and death

February 24, 2025

These are not the best of times to be a woman, to say nothing of any minority. The rise of bro culture and misogynistic incel culture, which helped propel President Donald J. Trump back into the White House; the demise of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in government and much of the workplace; and the curtailing of reproductive rights are among the challenges that have led women to consider the backlash to their hard-won gains.

Perhaps that’s why I found the marvelously mocking Broadway musical “Six” so moving. It’s the story of a sextet of queen consorts who for most of their history were famous, even infamous, for their marriages to an orange, scowling, bloated, diseased malignant narcissist — Henry VIII. As “Six” explores with delicious irony, Henry — no Alexander the Great in the leadership department — is today mostly famous for having been married to them.

Members of the National Transportation Safety Board on the scene Saturday, Feb. 1, of the mid-air collision between a Black Hawk helicopter and a an American Airlines jet over the Potomac River at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. *Courtesy NTSB.*

Losing my voice to find it in the Trump era

February 2, 2025

How are we to respond to the times in which we find ourselves? Should we retreat, understanding that they are beyond our control? Or should we, knowing they are beyond our control, respond Stoically — with courage and calm, understanding, in the words of Rev. Sydney Smith, that “it is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing, because you could only do a little.”

As I pondered this over the Christmas break and into January — the so-called “wellness month” — I got very sick and lost my voice, an apt metaphor for losing the inner voice that has always been my North Star.

In the end, I concluded that reticence — even when you cannot physically “speak” — is a kind of cowardice, and that it is incumbent upon us all to speak out.

Johann Christian Schröder’s “The Annunciation” (circa 1690) depicts Mary’s initially troubled reaction at the news from the angel Gabriel that she was to be the mother of the Son of God. Courtesy Slovenia’s Ptuj Ormož Regional Museum

Yielding -- and overcoming -- in a season of dark and light

December 22, 2024

Central to the feast of Christmas, which Christians —and let’s face it, many non-Christians — will celebrate Wednesday, Dec. 25, is the story of the angel Gabriel coming to the town of Nazareth to tell the Virgin Mary that she will miraculously conceive and bear Jesus, the Son of God.

Much has been written about Mary as the new, obedient Eve — the anti-Eve, as it were — acquiescing to become the mother of God, with all the suffering his Passion will entail for her as well as him. (Think Michelangelo’s poignant “Pièta.”) And just as much has been written about so-called sacrilegious interpretations of Mary doubting this calling, (see Netflix series “Mary”); and Jungian interpretations of Mary as yet another mother in the miraculous birth narratives of famous men (see the stories of the Buddha, Alexander the Great and Augustus).

All these interpretations miss the point of the original text.

From left, President Joe Biden takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2021 as wife Jill and children Ashley and Hunter look on. *Courtesy the White House.*

Hunter Biden and life's double-edged sword

June 14, 2024

Context drives perception. What may be perceived as a strength in one scenario may be an Achilles’ heel in another.

Privilege raised Hunter Biden up. And privilege, which enabled his long addiction, may send him to prison for lying about that addiction on a gun application.

Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner April 26, 1999, less than three months before she, her husband, John F. Kennedy Jr., and her sister, Lauren Bessette, were killed in a plane crash. *Photograph by* *John Mathew Smith & www.celebrity-photos.com*.

'The wings of the dove' -- Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, a reappraisal

June 6, 2024

May 19 marked the 30th death anniversary of Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis — editor, style icon and former first lady of the United States (1961-63). Those of us who cover and mark such figures and occasions have already noted that in two months, almost to the day, we will commemorate the 25th death anniversary of the son she loved so much and the daughter-in-law she never knew.

On July 16, 1999 — as the evening, the century and the millennium began to draw to a close — publisher John F. Kennedy Jr. lost control of the plane he was piloting, killing himself; his wife, former Calvin Klein company publicist Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy; and her sister, Morgan Stanley executive Lauren Bessette.

In the quarter-century since, there has been an almost radical reappraisal of Bessette-Kennedy — by a generation of influencers who’ve adapted her classic, minimalist, monochromatic aesthetic; and by authors sympathetic to a lovely, empathetic woman ensnared by the image she helped to create.