Life keeps happening.

Pope Sixtus is the next name on the docket and I will get it out by July. Another fascinating history if not as long as Leo or Gregory.

I have promised a former student to read along with her: Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, Fathers and Sons by Turgenev, and Paradise Lost by you know who. So I will attempt to drop a few thoughts about that sometime over the course of June.

Another topic: Pope Leo's first encyclical. After reading the first ten paragraphs, I am very struck by his distributist (that word is clearly lurking in the background) interpretation of Nehemiah, the story he presents as paradigmatic for human economic effort arranged in a way consistent with human nature and our relationship with God. Surely Bill and I can find some grist to grind there when I get him corralled and back at a microphone.