Couple of years back, I found myself in a heated discussion with the policy guru for the Holy See Mission to the United Nations. A major piece of “legislation” was going before the UN on the status of refugees, and the Church was negotiating protections for those who were fleeing harm. Given Pope Francis’ encyclical, […]
Tag: UN
Reupp: “Trump Will Not Leave Office Alive”
Half the reason I write the stuff I do is because, while I’m not in the business of prediction, I am deeply interested in history–how it repeats or mirrors the past. Suffice to say, I wrote this piece titled “Trump will not leave office alive” one year ago. I didn’t get everything right, but I […]
Trump Appears to be Flirting with Genocide
What seemed at first to have been a feckless and ignorant response to the spread of COVID-19 is starting to look more malicious over time. You can only bungle something for so long before the repeated missteps reach a point where they have to be more than just missteps. There is reporting out this morning […]

Quarantine, Day 37
Coming out of the Great Depression, one of the Civil Works Administration projects of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal was the construction of a small stretch of road through Bergen County, New Jersey and into lower New York State. It’s maybe one of the most beautiful drives you can take in this part of the […]

Trump Will Not Leave Office Alive
That is to say, he does not intend to ever have to step down or stop serving as President of the United States. And as outlandish a statement that may seem to those of us who still want to believe in and hope that our sacred norms and traditions remain sacred, the writing is already […]
The Freedom and Imprisonment of Being a Toddler, or Vacationing in Virginia
Through a large swath of Virginia, there’s a road called the Skyline that hugs the Appalachian trail at the top of a series of mountain ridges. It’s basically exactly what you’d imagine it should be: pristine views, stretches of asphalt where you find yourself driving under, through, and above the cloudline, rain that pops up […]
Making Sacred Space Where There is None
There’s this moment during a misty rain in New York City where if you look up to the skyline, the familiarity of the buildings you’ve grown accustomed to seeing in the sunshine is lost to the low-hanging clouds. If you squint, you can see one of the taller towers just peering through the fog but […]
