Notre Dame Magazine
What Is the Way Out of Here?
“It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it,” Flannery O’Connor once wrote, and for Catholics, each day’s headlines this past year...
Read Article
Are We Alone?
In October 2017, a telescope in Hawaii detected the first confirmed “interstellar object” spotted in our solar system. Christened ‘Oumuamua (pronounced oh-MOO-uh-MOO-uh),...
Read Article
What I Do Know
At the time it seemed a reasonable proposition. At least to my 9-year-old mind it did. My older brother had told me that, if I stood on the fringed rug in the upstairs hallway, he...
Read Article
Tidings from the Other Side
I am the keeper of a family memory. Its details are blurry and its edges curled, but I hold it close, like a pocketworn heirloom photograph. My grandmother is 6. She is playing on...
Read Article
Savor the Inexplicable
Tragedy and joy collided in my life the week my father died unexpectedly and my wife —equally unexpectedly — discovered she was pregnant. My view of the universe changed, too,...
Read Article
Hesburgh: The Documentary
A few things indicated that the world premiere for the documentary film Hesburgh might be different, but nothing had prepared director Patrick Creadon ’89 for what he...
Read Article
Ghost Tracks
As a kid growing up in northern Illinois, I wasn’t the sort who was overly concerned with supernatural phenomena. My imagination ran more along the lines of Casper the Friendly...
Read Article
Le Jongleur de Notre Dame
The year 1939 had been rude to Richard Sullivan. A sweet-tempered and longsuffering professor of English and creative writing at Notre Dame, Sullivan ’30 maintained an active...
Read Article
Things That Go Bump in the Night
I will never forget the scariest ghost story I ever heard. I attended summer camp in Nova Scotia, on a crescent-shaped promontory overlooking the Bay of Fundy. Then and now, this...
Read Article
Mob Bombs Rockne Plane
Knute Rockne needed a plane ticket to fly to Los Angeles. Since leading his Fighting Irish to their third undefeated and untied national championship season in his 13 years as...
Read Article
Just Lending a Hand
Day 1 When I walked into the Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas, people were everywhere — kids playing and running around, mothers nursing babies, teenagers chatting...
Read Article
Hunting All Cryptids
Consider the platypus. Had a live specimen of this semiaquatic mammal not been captured, studied and documented by scientists, could you imagine such a creature exists? Featuring...
Read Article