Author Archives | Patrick O'Hannigan

Patrick O'Hannigan - who has written 13 posts on Catholic Exchange.


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Beach Glass: An Argument

Posted on 09 June 2010

The ragtop was down, the radio played “Drift Away,” and the sky was baby blue over the raked edge of my windshield, but a sand-in-my-shoe comment I’d seen a few hours before kept me from singing backup for Dobie Gray.…

Dragging Hay Bales and Agendas into Church

Posted on 30 April 2010

Peggy Noonan and Nicholas Kristof want to fix the Catholic Church. With Noonan writing for the Wall Street Journal and Kristof writing for the New York Times, neither columnist needs parchment on a door in a university town to float…

The Pope, the Scandal, and the Crib Notes for Journalism 101

Posted on 08 April 2010

Here we are among the calla lilies, many of us meditating on the eternal resonance of events in and around old Jerusalem, yet spring chores still need doing, and the crabgrass of ignorance is even more stubborn than the weeds…

Some Are More Equal Than Others

Posted on 24 March 2009

With another in a series of executive orders, President Obama on March 11 created a "White House Council on Women and Girls."
Having been advised that female CEOs run only three percent of the Fortune 500 companies, and that women…

Who and for Whom We Are

Posted on 04 November 2008

Understanding sometimes comes while I’m walking a tabby cat, a golden retriever and a Cavalier spaniel on a quiet street under a full moon, with the jingle of a collar to accompany the counting of my blessings.
Al Pacino and…

Lost in Translation

Posted on 02 July 2008

Barack Obama using Christian and Jewish scriptures as mendaciously as Bill Clinton once did, when the former president took to choreographing his church visits so that photographers could see the huge gold cross on the cover of the bible that…

It’s Daffy Among the Intellectualoids

Posted on 04 March 2008

Being an American of Irish and Mexican heritage has certain advantages, and one of them is that I do not usually fret about the pronouncements of Anglican leaders. John Henry Newman had it indelicately but indubitably right some 120 years ago, I think, when he asserted, "There are but two alternatives, the way to Rome, and the way to Atheism," before adding that "Anglicanism is the halfway house on the one side, and Liberalism is the halfway house on the other."

Like Newman eventually did, I look to the Pope and the Catechism of the Catholic Church for theological guidance. Accordingly, I had promised myself that I was not going to write about Anglican troubles.

Anonymous Saints

Posted on 30 October 2006

I’m a semi-regular at a coffee kiosk owned by a bear of a man named Joe, but staffed on the days that I stop for a cup by a barista named Nicole.
Heroes All
Nicole doesn't know my name, but…

Reclaiming Saint Paul

Posted on 01 July 2005

If libraries in your town are anything like libraries in mine, they give more shelf space to secular than to religious subjects. Accordingly, I was surprised to find Fr. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor’s book, Paul: His Story (Oxford University Press, 2004) displayed…

Lent and the Modern Mind

Posted on 10 March 2005

Talk-radio host Michael Savage, who is something of an authority on political labels, said recently that Pope John Paul II “may be the last true liberal.” Like Avery Cardinal Dulles and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus before him, Savage offered that…