What if the ashes remind us not only that we are dust, but that we are meant to refract divine light? Perhaps you already have loved ones who are doing so. Read it at: https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/the-light-we-leave-behind

Perhaps we should ask what kind of culture is forming young men who feel untethered from reality.

You’re listening to a podcast dedicated to narrations of my written work, and that will continue. I’ve also started a separate daily podcast with my co-host, Jakob Kraft, where we comment on the news. To check out that show, visit RiseRight.org.

Hillary Clinton has written an op-ed for The Atlantic that is permeated with moral indignation. She decries “MAGA’s War on Empathy” and then engages in a one-woman war on Truth.

A snowstorm has a way of reminding us how small we are. For all our technology, we wait and hope just as our forebears did.

Lauren Southern’s memoir shows how the populist right devolved, destroying its main actors and leaving audiences lost. We can’t build a civilization on outrage. https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/outrage-is-not-a-moral-vision-lauren

We exhaust ourselves trying to plan futures we were never given grace to survive. There’s no God in chess, but there is in real life. https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/theres-no-god-in-chess

A diocese’s seminarians reflect its spiritual ecology. So why dismantle what was working? The Diocese of Charlotte is delaying ordinations and stripping seminarians of their cassocks, while forcing them into a year of lay work mid-formation. Read the article: https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/when-a-diocese-undermines-its-own-vocations

There is a growing ideological trend that seeks to deprive those broadly considered to being “on the right” of any and all rights, through dehumanization and the systematic exclusion from key institutions. I lived this reality in a small way when I was made a victim of a minor crime in an American city. https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2026/01/04/unworthy-of-justice-how-ideology-determines-victims/

Christianity has never been a faith of mere sentiment. From the first century onward, it has made a claim on the whole person, and it comes into sharp focus at Christmas. Read the article: https://writings.crusadergal.com/p/the-claim-christianity-makes-at-christmas