Engineering and Efficiency – Leah Libresco
It was my pleasure to review Brian Potter’s The Origins of Efficiency for American Compass’s Commonplace. One of the most moving victories of re-engineering that Potter describes is the…| Leah Libresco
It was my pleasure to review Brian Potter’s The Origins of Efficiency for American Compass’s Commonplace. One of the most moving victories of re-engineering that Potter describes is the…| Leah Libresco
Charlotte’s Bishop is shunting all the Traditional Latin Mass communities to a single site, specifically chosen because it can only hold about a quarter of those who currently seek out the Extraordinary Form. I have a paywalled op-ed for The Pillar (they’re worth it!) with a prayer for what could happen next. If he wants to reform the TLM community in Charlotte, I wish that Bishop Martin would offer the TLM once a month in […]| Leah Libresco
Daniel K. Williams is a can’t miss historian for me. I was delighted to get an early copy of his Abortion and America’s Churches, a history of how denominations chose sides around Roe v. Wade. I drew on one thread of his history for an essay for Word on Fire. In Williams’s telling, in the wake of World War II, there was a desire in many philosophical and religious traditions to be able to speak […]| Leah Libresco
I was pleased to get to respond to Suzanne O’Sullivan’s The Age of Diagnosis for Fairer Disputations. She wrote a compassionate, curious book on a highly charged issue: O’Sullivan isn’t…| Leah Libresco
The divorce rate is declining, but for the worst reasons. Fewer and fewer people are getting married. I explain the problem for the Institute for Family Studies. The decline in marriage has also not been uniform. Wealthier and better-educated singles are more likely to get married than those who are poorer and less educated. Marriage rates also have a significant racial gap. This means the declining divorce rate is much more a compositional effect, driven by […]| Leah Libresco
At The Dispatch, I’m making a case against customized wedding vows. Promising marriage is entering an pre-existing institution, not an act of expressive individualism. Classically, the marriage vows are not about the particular couple standing at the altar—they’re about the institution the couple is choosing to enter. Classical vows (for better, for worse, etc) have lasted with only minor revisions for a thousand years. They are intended to suit every couple, uncustomized, and they enum...| Leah Libresco
I’ve got an appreciation of Andor that goes hard on greebles (the small, irregular pieces of plastic that give Star Wars ships their detailed texture). It’s the greebles that gave the Empire’…| Leah Libresco
It was my pleasure to write about Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati’s second miracle for Word on Fire. His canonization hinges on the healing of a seminarian’s Achilles tendon tear—not the kind…| Leah Libresco
I changed my mind about euthanasia in June 2015. The world has been rushing in the other direction. For The Dispatch I explain why MAiD makes an idol of autonomy and endangers our sense of what it means to be human. Moving past the desire for “death with dignity” requires admitting that autonomy is not the ordering principle of a human life. Every person begins their life as a burden to someone else. It isn’t […]| Leah Libresco
Pictured above are three of my big projects of 2024. I read The Power Broker over my maternity leave, I read Sr. Prudence Allen in the waning months of the year, and my baby I grew all year (in and…| Leah Libresco
It’s been a turbulent but mostly good year, with some pileups of new projects, two sisters old enough to play together, and a new job on the horizon for the new year. No novels on my best of …| Leah Libresco
2022 had the most babies and the fewest books read, both in total, and off of my “to read” list for the year. This was predictable. I read 7/11 of my “to read” books, and 85…| Leah Libresco
