1. Need some peace? A Year with the Mystics is 10 percent off on Amazon today. It might help.

There was a book launch event in D.C. this week. NRI provided the cake:

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4. Today is the 75th birthday of the Archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles J. Chaput. He’s been a good spiritual father to many people, myself included. He knows Christ and tries to show Him in the world by the way he lives his live, by what he teaches, and by engaging the culture. Here’s one example of his focusing clarity:

This is a good article about him.

I interviewed him a number of times over the years and have been blessed to spend a little time with him now and again. Here’s something that stood out to me in his book on religious liberty and his answer when I asked him about it in 2012:

Why the Melville quote — “Truth is like a threshing-machine; tender sensibilities must keep out of the way”?
The public discourse of Catholics needs to be guided by charity and respect for others, but above all by truth. The truth can be difficult, so we often want to soften its edges. But this just wastes time and compounds our problems. Candor can be uncomfortable in the short run, but it’s much healthier in the long run.
The point is this: We need to be frank with each other as Christian adults, frank in our public witness and frank in our own self-criticism. Again, we also need to be prudent and kind — but not at the expense of courage, and not at the expense of speaking the truth.

Here’s a 2017 interview where he said:

Augustine lived in an age of confusion and change very like our own. It was a kind of hinge-point between historical epochs, a time filled with both possibility and anxiety. And yet he never lost his sense of joy and hope, his love for the beauty of creation, or his gratitude for God’s gift of life. If we want to have the same inner freedom, and we certainly need it today, Augustine is the model for our time.

(Augustine is in A Year with the Mystics, by the way.)

5. In the New York Times: Why America’s Abortion Rate Might Be Higher Than It Appears

Evidence suggests more American women are “self-managing” their abortions.

6. Also there: South Korean Clinic Performed Abortion on Wrong Woman, Police Say

7. Central Indiana county prosecutor was raised in foster care

8. China’s Main Threat Is a Moral One

9. From Turkey to Cuba to Mexico to America: A Kurdish Refugee’s Journey

10. The Dueling Moralities of Middle Eastern Democracy

11. Why Women Love the Home but Not Being a Homemaker

(Check out the new Theology of Home.)

12. Ben Domenech’s Federalist podcast on death and grace

13. Monday was the feast day of Padre Pio. He’s one of the people whose spiritual writings I include in A Year with the Mystics.

Here’s a little from a homily (from 10,000+ Masses priest) that gets to why he’s such a gift to help us get to know God better:

Padre Pio was a man of prayer who urged others to pray, founding prayer groups all over the world. Even after long grueling hours in the confessional, he would spend much of the night in prayer. He once described himself as “only a poor friar who prays” and encouraged lay people to come together to pray in small groups, tens of thousands of which still exist across the globe under his celestial patronage. “In books we seek God,” he said, but “in prayer we find him. Prayer is the key that opens God’s heart.” In prayer we listen for God’s whisper and take care of what we hear!

14. A dearest friend to a number of us at and around National Review, Kate O’Beirne would have been 70 years old this week. A few of many tributes here and here.

People often tell me they didn’t get to meet her but reading the tributes have helped them look around and love one another a little better and more while there is still time.

15. There’s a Catholic ministry called Hard as Nails that has a charism we need in our country today. A quick column here on my recent meet-up with them.

Plus: Come to the Sheen Center in New York on October 7 at 7 p.m. for a conversation on the virtue of hope from people from difference backgrounds and experiences who see it and have it and know it’s a precious resource. (Peter Wehner, Michael Wear, Kristen Hanson, with me moderating.) It’s the first in a National Review Institute series at the Sheen Center on virtue in America. (We’re thinking they’ll be in the fall and spring of every year.)

Details on more of our fall programs there here (an adoption event, and two book discussions, with Tim Carney and Mary Eberstadt).