John Tuttle

Earlier this year, the independent publisher Slant Books released the novel Child of These Tears. Focusing on a juvenile protagonist, Constance Baker, and set in colonial America at the beginning of the 1700s, the book is delivered in fragments, or little glimpses, in the form of letters, journal entries, and other brief snapshots into the characters’ lives, hearts, and minds. This delivery, while rather unique, allows both for a quick read and a depth of introspective development that might ...

Thomas’ classmates snubbed him, judged him on the spot
“Dumb Ox” they dubbed him in jest for his taciturn ways
But they forgot that quietude is the wise man’s lot
He soon poured forth silver speech, cutting through darkest haze
He gained wisdom from scholars pagan and divine
Admiring their harvests, their new and old yields
Yet he favored one that above the rest did shine:
Rich, golden grasses gleaned from Macedon fields
The Ox took the Greek grains, mulled them over in his jaw
Ruminated on t...

Many people get introduced to the Jewish writer and Holocaust victim Anne Frank via her Diary of a Young Girl in a middle school literature class. But my own first impression of Anne came from her less well-known Tales from the Secret Annex, which deviates from the tone and material of her Diary in that it is a collection of mostly fictitious anecdotes and sketches.

“I am writing to you, children, because your sins have been forgiven for his name’s sake. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning” (1 John 2:12-13a).

It’s the year’s end, and I’m desperately trying to pump out a few last-minute reviews of a few of the books I’ve enjoyed from 2025. The lines above, taken from the first epistle of John the Evangelist, appropriately speak to the subject matter of this review: fathers and their children.

Length is never an ultimate marker of fine literature. Certainly, some of Western civilization’s greatest works are beefy volumes: The Count of Monte Cristo, War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Lord of the Rings, to name a few. But a well-written poem or short story can be just as powerful as any other art form.
With the short attention span gifted me by modernity and the limited time which everyone seems to scrape out of their daily lives for leisure, one is often forced to be sel...

APoem:

On a cold autumn morning
A winter storm was moaning
But away indoors there arose a hush
Quieting ourselves from the season’s rush
For Father was then vesting
Our reflective souls, resting
Till through the hallway, clad in white, the priest came
To open the liturgy in the Holy Name
He signed himself and uttered words held sacred
Both Scripture and Eucharistic rite were read
The Sacrifice to our heavenly Father elevated
Was on a lowly carpenter’s cabinet celebrated...

Years ago, a copy of a Chicago Tribune magazine arrived at our house. It came around the holidays, and in it I read a rather upsetting article. It has stuck with me ever since. If that was the writer’s intent, he certainly succeeded.
In his article “Why I declared war on Christmas”, Christopher Borrelli dismissed any real threat to Christmas with a sizable dollop of sarcasm, yet remained true to his word in that he was “undermining” the authentic meaning of the season. It’s no...

The Third Sunday of Advent — Catholic Artist Connection

Living and Dying Well: A Catholic Plan for Resisting Physician-Assisted Killing, by moral theologian Charles Camosy, is deeply learned and also immensely practical, filled with both wisdom and urgency.
On this continent and abroad, governments are increasingly debating, and often passing into law, a so-called “right to die.” This faux right is the permission for, and more often the subtle coercion of, an individual to apply for self-destruction. We who oppose assisted suicide on the grounds o...

Child of These Tears
by Molly McNett
Slant Books, October 1st, 2025
Being human is being peculiar to all of creation. We have a body that tends toward the way of all flesh, that wilts and fades. But we have too a spirit, akin to the angels, which soars upward, always seeking. Our restless, at times uneasy, existence faces many moments where we, as Prof. Molly McNett might say, cleave our self in two. We do it all the time.

ROCKFORD—A whitewashed sky gave way to sunny blue as the morning wore on and pro-life advocates prepared for the fifth consecutive Rockford Walk for Life and Family, June 14, outside Rockford’s City Hall.
Begun in 2021 and organized by the Rockford Family Initiative, the event includes a rally and march, garnering the support and presence of several Christian denominations, including Catholics, Lutherans and Baptists. Kevin Rilott, one of the event’s organizers, estimated that attendees came ...

ROCKFORD—On July 30, St. Bernadette Parish hosted a talk by Illinois Right to Life president, Mary Kate Zander, that welcomed around 40 people including representatives from local pregnancy care centers, trained sidewalk advocates and other concerned individuals.
Zander’s “Ground Zero” talk focused on warnings that point to a possible amendment to the Illinois constitution that would threaten the sanctity of human life.
She noted that in Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s 2023 inauguration speech, he state...