Doctrine and the Cure of Souls, by Anthony Esolen

One of my neighbors is a pleasant and apparently hard-working young man with a child by a marriage that smashed on the rocks.  He has nothing good to say about his ex-wife, so he says nothing at all, though you can tell that he hasn’t forgiven her.  The little boy gets shunted from one bitter parent to the other.

It doesn’t appear to me that he goes to any church.  I suppose it is possible.  But I am guessing, if he is like countless others of his age, that he regards it not as a duty, or even as an invitation to a realm of wonder, but as a form of therapy, or of socializing; a kind of hobby with a little bit of special language and a couple of beliefs you are supposed to hold, though nobody would inquire too closely into it. …