By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Did you ever wonder how your own ancestors, especially those who were Martin Luther King Jr.’s contemporaries, dealt with issues of race and bias in their…

By Gary Topping– My wife Marianna and I met in the fall of 1991 when we were both hired to teach at Salt Lake Community College, she in the writing…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– While helping to find new homes for some the remaining items from the library at the now-closed Trappist monastery in Huntsville, I grew curious about how…

By Jean Welch Hill– The 2019 Utah legislative session will open on the fourth Monday of January. As we do every year, the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City will…

By Gary Topping– As faithful readers of The Boy Monk now know, Mike O’Brien and I have become the unplanned custodians of several hundred books from the now-defunct Abbey of…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– I must not get it. By “it” I mean the transitory nature of life and all its manifestations. I seem to grasp the concept, at least…

By Gary Topping– I’ve never been one, even as a kid, to stay up to celebrate the arrival of a new year.  Instead, I’m usually long since in bed and…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– As one year passes and a new one starts, I wonder if it possible to get more Irish as you get older. Scientists would argue no,…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– The fifty year old photo of my family’s old aluminum Christmas tree includes a surprise. A small and almost undetectable child in red and white striped…

By Gary Topping– The Third Sunday of Advent, which we have just passed, is known as Gaudete Sunday.  “Gaudete” is a plural Latin imperative, which could properly be translated as…