Category Archives: Blog

René Girard circa 1962 – A Student’s Perspective

Posted on December 4, 2018 by Randy Coleman-Riese

The Imitatio website has recently posted a fascinating window into the classroom of then Johns Hopkins University professor René Girard who was offering a class on “The French Novel of the 19th and 20th Centuries”. In the second semester of … Continue reading →

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Expecting Advent

Posted on December 2, 2018 by Randy Coleman-Riese

The season of Advent has always been a time of expectation ever since the first one in that dusty corner of the Roman Empire. The Latin root meaning expresses just this sense of ‘what is to come’. But, what to … Continue reading →

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A Simon of Cyrene Opportunity – Earning a Place in the Story

Posted on November 30, 2018 by Randy Coleman-Riese

Gil Bailie recently gave a presentation to the priests and seminarians of St. Patrick’s University and Seminary in Menlo Park. A decade ago St. Patrick’s was one of the stops on the traveling road show of the Emmaus Road Initiative. … Continue reading →

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Bells & Whistles and Our Annual Plea for Support

Posted on November 17, 2018 by Randy Coleman-Riese

        The ‘Fall Appeal’, which you may read by following the link,  is our annual foray into fundraising and was once described to me as a “begging letter”. I prefer the phrase, “mendicant missive” myself. Alliteration aside, … Continue reading →

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René Girard Via First Things

Posted on November 12, 2018 by Randy Coleman-Riese

The journal First Things has recently featured on its website a short essay by Peter J. Leithart entitled ‘Clashing Victimocracies!’  The author explores the privileged and problematic position of the ‘victim’ in current social and political debate. In doing so … Continue reading →

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Something Imponderable…

Posted on November 10, 2018 by Randy Coleman-Riese

This Sunday marks the 100th anniversary of the end of “The War To End All Wars”. The conflict lasted over four years and involved more than 70 million combatants. An estimated nine million soldiers were killed in the course of … Continue reading →

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The Religious Backdrop of the Vote

Posted on November 9, 2018 by Randy Coleman-Riese

This past week people across the United States participated in the public ritual of voting. These days, though, it is becoming less of a public act at the polling place and more of a private affair with the advent of … Continue reading →

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The Public Atmospherics of Health

Posted on October 29, 2018 by Gil Bailie

Here is a very timely message from the pen of Hans Urs von Balthasar, written decades before the current crisis in the Catholic Church: “The bold venture of speaking openly concerns everything that must urgently be said in Church and … Continue reading →

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New Items from the Archives & Notes on a New Perspective

Posted on October 19, 2018 by Randy Coleman-Riese

When Gil Bailie first encountered the work of René Girard in the mid-1980s he had for years been hosting weekly gatherings for discussion of classics from the Western literary and spiritual tradition. These discussions became over time more in the … Continue reading →

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Spiritual Adventure

Posted on October 9, 2018 by Gil Bailie

    I am no George Bernanos, but what the French novelist said about the condition of a Christian writer conforms to my own experience:   “If the good Lord really wants you to bear witness, you must expect to … Continue reading →

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