By Michael Patrick O’Brien– I am not an Italian, nor an opera fan, nor a New Yorker. As a result, one could wonder why in the world I fell head…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– I recently cleaned and moved out of my office at the Salt Lake City law firm where I worked for thirty-seven years. As I labored, I…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Most people understand my new book Monastery Mornings (Paraclete Press 2021) as a story about men, specifically Trappist monks and me. They are right. From time…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– The Kentucky Derby—both the annual “Run for the Roses” and its home track Churchill Downs— played a vital role in the establishment of the old Trappist…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– The University of Notre Dame is 180 years old in 2022. Father Edward Sorin and his fellow Holy Cross priests started the venerable institution near two…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Perhaps the greatest of my many misunderstandings about the nature of grandparent life is thinking I could not pick my own grand moniker. I can, and…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien Do you believe in the Easter Bunny? You might think it unreal, or perhaps the sole domain of imaginative playwrights or abnormal psychology, but I’ve had…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– I often worry about how young folks today will adapt and respond after enduring two very difficult years of COVID-19 existential dread. Then I remember how…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Baseball is a game that is not a mere game. Filmmaker Ken Burns once called it “an American odyssey that links sons and daughters to father…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– During a recent walk in Salt Lake City’s lovely Mount Calvary cemetery, I was surprised to stumble upon not one, but two headstones honoring local priests…