Patrick T. Brown

Witnessing History: No Runs, No Hits, No Errors, No Better Ending WASHINGTON - A season’s final home game tends to be a valedictory affair - fan appreciation, kid appreciation, even player appreciation as a team’s stars are pulled to an friendly ovation. Sunday’s matchup against the Miami Marlins started off on a similar note. By the fourth inning, stars Bryce Harper, Anthony Rendon, and Adam LaRoche had given way to journeymen and newcomers like Kevin Frandsen, Tyler Moore, and Nate Schierholz. Manager Matt Williams was giving the youngsters (or, from the perspective of Rendon and Harper, the oldsters) one last chance at playing on a big league field before the 25-man roster would prepare for playoff ball and the rest of the team would head home to, in the immortal words of Rogers Hornsby, stare out the window and wait for spring. An Ian Desmond home run had the home side up one in a game with no postseason implications, and one by one, each of the team’s recognizable stars ...

A Less Elegant Moral Universe for a Less Civilized Age May 7, 2014 Originally posted as part of  Humane Pursuits symposium  comparing the moral universes of Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. “Any entity – no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul” -  Br. Guy J. Consolmagno, SJ , Research Astronomer, Vatican Observatory  No one who grew up teaching themselves Tengwar (Elvish writing, for the cultural Philistines out there) from the appendices of “The Return of the King” - and I know I’m not the only one - could ever deny the power of J.R.R. Tolkien’s rich imagination, evocative prose, and tales of heroism. The world of The Lord of the Rings offers the reader an immersive experience in a imagined universe clearly grounded in the medieval world of which Tolkien was an esteemed scholar. In an Aristotelian sense, characters have a telos they are called to - Aragorn, the rightful heir of Gondor; Samwise Gamgee, fulfilling his...

A globe-trotting, wide-ranging exploration of the cultural and societal trends weakening families and threatening children, “Irreplaceable” argues for the importance of sparking social change from the individual level. The film, which hits theaters nationwide on Tuesday, May 6, is a production of the Colorado-based Christian non-profit Focus on the Family, which devoted resources to produce a feature-length documentary that examines what “family” means from a faith-centered perspective. Tim Sisarich, executive director of Focus on the Family New Zealand, uses his exploration of his father’s moral failings and his desire to set a solid example for his children as a narrative device for an Indiana Jones-like adventure, interviewing a veritable Who’s Who of experts on marriage and the family in locales from Greece to New York City to Seattle.

This week's New York Times Magazine examines " How Hollywood Killed Death ." Alexander Huls recalls the temporary loss of Captain James Kirk, Pepper Potts, and Loki in last year's batch of action/superhero product offerings: "Death is no longer just a transparent formula; it has been hybridized with something worse: Business strategy. There is no greater force in the world for wringing the passion out of human affairs than the desiccating logic of quarterly earnings reports. Of course, Hollywood has always been a business...[But] no matter how much movies or comics depart into realities with superpowered beings, technologically advanced futures or fantastical worlds full of impossible creatures, they still need to do what all good stories should: Tell us something about being human. But most of today’s movies are telling us death doesn’t matter. And it’s hard to imagine a more inhuman observation than that."