CATCHING UP: Three articles I wrote have been published recently! I reviewed Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution; also reviewed a really good novel, The Inverted Forest (link is subscribers-only for now); and reviewed two shows of war photography (also subscribers-only). Definitely recommend the photography--at the Corcoran through May 20--and The Inverted Forest.

AN ATTACK OF MORNING GLORIES! My review of the Met's Japanese summer and fall art exhibit. You should all go see it! The review is currently subscribers-only, unfortunately.

I DON'T BELIEVE IN MODERN LOVE: I have a review in the current Weekly Standard of the Neue Galerie's "Vienna 1900" exhibit. It's a great show; go see it! It'll run until at June 27. The review is subscribers-only for now, but I'll let you know if that changes.

AND THE MIDDLE AGES REALLY WEREN'T THAT BAD, WEREN'T THAT BAD! That Cato Unbound symposium on tradition(alism) has finished! You can read the whole thing from the top here. A lot of people really seemed to like this exchange, and it's definitely not the usual Cato fare (which I generally like!), so you might check it out.

"MARY, IN THE GLASS COFFIN OF THE MUSEUM." My column at Inside Catholic.

WINE INTO WATER. I have a review of Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church in the current Weekly Standard.

"THE GREAT UNWEAVING": I have a long piece at Inside Catholic:

I'm sitting outside a downtown Starbucks with two George Washington University undergraduates, talking about sex, politics, and religion. Michele Walk and Conor Joseph Rogers fit my stereotype of contemporary American college students. They're sincere, confident, and hyperaware of the ways in which they're different from their parents.

Michele and Conor also represent a growing demographic: They consider themselves both pro-life and supporters of gay marriage.

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"ZOUNDS! FIVE REFLECTIONS ON THE WOUNDS OF CHRIST." My latest for Inside Catholic. The last two are my favorites.

"HEARTBREAK HILL": Subscribers to the American Conservative can get my new column here (PDF)--it's about Capitol Hill.

"TOLSTOY DIES, GOES TO AMERICA": I review The Last Station at Inside Catholic.

"SIX IMPERFECT METAPHORS FOR CONVERSION." My latest at Inside Catholic.

"LIVE THROUGH THIS": My column at Inside Catholic. The Catholic Church is not a box of answers.

(Also, "goon" is not a typo!)

"UNDERGRADUATES ARE THE MOST SINCERE SHOPPERS THE WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN." Apparently my AmCon piece about Georgetown is now available to subscribers as a PDF here. I... uh... am not a subscriber, so I have exactly no idea what's in this piece. Does it even contain the sentence in the title of this post? I don't know. Anyway, there's probably something about The Exorcist, and my high school drama, and the arduous process of constructing an identity.

"BLACK AND WHITE": I have a review in the current Weekly Standard, of the Phillips Collection's exceptional show, "Man Ray, African Art, And the Modernist Lens," through 01/10/10. The show is really terrific; and I think actually this review is pretty good, too. Subscribers-only for now.

"UNSAFE AT ANY CREED": My current AmCon column looks at Brookland/CUA. Subscribers can read it here (PDF).

This issue isn't as good as their stellar books issue--I think the cover article rests on a naive view of an American Golden Age when we had a "humble foreign policy" (TM GW Bush, summer 2000) and the press afflicted the comfortable--but AmCon consistently finds interesting and entertaining writers, and then gets out of their way.

"HEAVEN CAN WAIT": Me, at Inside Catholic, in which I discuss Hell, American character, slapping your mama, and the centurion who speared the side of Christ:

There's a terrific moment in the TV show House, in which the irascible and brilliant Dr. Greg House is explaining to a lapsed Catholic subordinate why he doesn't believe in the afterlife. House, with all the self-lacerating irony that actor Hugh Laurie can impart to the character, says, "I would hate to think that all of this was just a test."

House is right -- and he's offered a crucial diagnosis of one form of Catholic piety. There's a way of thinking about the afterlife that makes this life, here, irrelevant and even inexplicable. Catholics will sometimes argue against universalism -- the comforting belief that all people must be saved, because God would never be so cruel as to damn somebody's grandma -- by asking, "If everyone is saved, why even bother to do the right thing here on earth?"

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"SHELF LIFE." My new AmCon column--which is only available to subscribers online, so check your local libraries and newsstands!--takes a look at Martin Luther King, Jr. Public Library. I think this is my favorite DC column so far.

MY COLUMN in the current American Conservative is about Malcolm X Park/Meridian Hill Park. You may be able to get a PDF version by scrolling down here.

I note that this issue of AmCon quotes not only the Cramps (in my piece) but also the Dead Kennedys (in Jesse Walker's profile of Jerry Brown).

More seriously, if even half the allegations in the cover story are true, it's one of the more shocking things I've read in a while.

SETTLING: I have a review of Andrew Cherlin's Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today in the current Weekly Standard. Link is subscribers-only right now; I'll let you know if that changes....

LILAC SEASONS IN THE LAND OF DREAMS: I have a column in the new American Conservative. This one is about Shepherd Park, the DC neighborhood where I grew up: the language of masks and the silence of skin.

I don't think it's online yet, so check your newsstands!