Fear All Around Me, by Phil Lawler

By Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture, Nov 25, 2024

Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is the news director and lead analyst at CatholicCulture.org. 

When I started the car this morning, a message appeared on the dashboard: “Roads may be icy.”

Right. We’ve had very little rain here for the last several weeks, and the roads are dry. But the temperature was below freezing early in the morning— as it will be, off and on, for the next three or four months— so the reminder was useful. Noted.

As I pulled out of our little dirt lane, another message appeared, warning me that I was low on fuel. Not very low, actually; the car’s computer calculated that I could drive another 70 miles before I hit empty. So that alert would be helpful if I had been planning to drive across the Mojave Desert. As it happens, in the next few days I have no plans that will take me more than a mile or two from the closest gas station, so the early warning wasn’t necessary. But under different circumstances it might have been, so I had no complaint. …

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