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Volume III:
Catholic Imaginations
01
Welcome to Nexus
by Michael P. Murphy
Nexus: Conversations on the Catholic Intellectual Tradition is a digital-age journal that amplifies and publishes the scholarly dialogue taking place in the Hank Center—whether in symposia and conference proceedings or in the research of its several faculty working groups...
02
Volume Introduction
by William Gonch and Jessica Schnepp
It’s hard to believe the first Catholic Imagination Conference occurred almost a decade ago. For us, as for many Catholic writers, our first visit to the now-biennial CIC felt like two things at once, a discovery and a homecoming...
03
Lord I Believe, Help My Unbelief:
A Heroic Sonnet Crown for Today's Struggling Catholic
by Sophia Giudici
I hope in the end this will write itself / that my pencil will stop turning over / to erase words, letting the tip hover / useless over the page of buried wealth. / Decades of syllables in and still, self-rumination runs before I begin...
04
Arvo Pärt’s Theology:
Sketches on Cloud and Voice
by Nathan Bradford Williams
The Letter to the Hebrews contains for me one of the most beautiful and poetically intriguing images in all of the Bible: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us..."
05
Autopsy
by Jane Wageman
After the accident, Meredith’s belongings were collected, bagged, and saved for whoever might claim her. She wasn’t dead (not at all) just momentarily unconscious and bruised, with some internal bleeding and a cracked skull...
06
Beyond Lyric Christianity: Toward a Sacramental Novel
by William Gonch
There’s a new Catholic literary revival on. Young Catholic writers such as Christopher Beha, Kirstin Valdez Quade, and Katy Carl are winning prizes, landing book deals with Big Four publishers, and being reviewed in major publications...
08
All Winged Creatures
...an excerpt of a play
by Lindsay Kennedy
SCENE 1: A white room with white chairs and a white table. Joanie and Deirdre sit at the table across from each other.
JOANIE: Where are my wings?
DEIRDRE: We don’t have them...
09
A Wavering Form, A Nameless Thing:
Anne Finch and the Recovery of What It Means to be Human
by Rachel Nozicka
In his General Audience on January 13, 1988, St. John Paul II described miracles as revelations of God’s kingdom: “This ‘power from on high’ (Lk. 24:49), namely, God Himself, is above the entire natural order. It directs this order and at the same time makes it known that– through this order and superior to it–human destiny is the kingdom of God.”...
10
Eight Hours in Late December
by Ellen Jewett
Adeline gazed absentmindedly toward the warm sparking light of her Christmas tree, tiny just like her apartment, taking in its homeyness and basking in a final moment of calm. In the dusk-darkened window behind the tree, a halo of reflected light sanctified her face....
11
The Human Encounter with Desolation:
Highway 61 Revisited and the Prayers of Karl Rahner
by Foster J. Pinkney
Karl Rahner (1904-1984) suggests that there is a vast cosmic order, lovingly created and set in place by God, designed to shepherd humanity back into integration with the divine. As such, our own experiences–the way we interact with history and the ethical acts which constitute relation–are more than mere whims given to expediency....
12
The Way toward the Light is through Darkness: A Spiritual Memoir of a Vietnamese Man Living Out God’s Calling in America
by Anh Tran
On the night before Ash Wednesday, I looked into the mirror and said, “I’m all in, Lord. I will follow your Will.” I was determined to stay in religious life and walk the path to priesthood. However, I was taken on a different path: a call to live out my authentic life...
13
Liquid Spirituality:
Reinterpreting Disaffiliation
by Matthew Zurcher, S.J.
The inaugural volume of this journal ended with Joe Vukov’s keen reflection on “the perceived conflict between religious faith and science” as a “primary cause” of religious disaffiliation. The steadily increasing number of disaffiliated Americans, those who say they belong to no religious institution...
14
Habits of Judgement: Emotions, Ethics, and Social Critique on the Border
by Michael Petro, S.J.
In the brutally hot summer of 2021, I served as a volunteer at the Kino Border Initiative in Nogales, Mexico. Widely known for advocating for border justice, Kino is a Jesuit organization that cares for migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border by offering shelter, meals, and accompaniment...