Anna Kennedy, who spent several years discerning a vocation with the Ann Arbor Dominican sisters, is “genuinely baffled by the question of female ordination.” What follows is a profound explanation of the feminine religious vocation. No nun she has ever met wants to be a priest—they want to be poured out in love for the Church and for souls. Drawing on St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Anna writes that “women are perfect recipients of love. The best way to receive is to have the most room to receive, the most emptiness. . . . This paradox is precisely why none of my sisters envied priests.”

For further reading: Charlotte Allen wrote a meandering review of nine books on the “Holy Feminine” (December 1999), touching on female saints ranging from the little-known St. Radegund to St. Joan of Arc.

Associate editor Justin Lee recently published a book, The Prisoner’s Cinema, reviewed today by playwright Matthew Gasda. The book, a collection of short horror stories, probes the “perhaps ontologically correct intuition that something bigger, looser, more malevolent—a force—is darting around the globe, disassembling goodwill,” while most minds repress this intuition under “automated lives protected by the American empire,” Gasda writes.  

“The psyche at the center of A Prisoner’s Cinema wants to wake up from the hallucinations, wants to push itself as far as possible, so that when the hallucinations are over, there is no doubt about what to do next. Find salvation.”

For further reading: Justin wrote a beautiful essay on the concept of “Holy Fear” (May 2022):

“Fear of God is categorically distinct from other fears, because its object is the ground of being itself. He who tamed leviathan and covers Sinai in holy darkness, who laid the foundations of the earth and shut up the doors of the sea, whose mind is an abyss of mystery and yet the only thing worth knowing—how can we discover his eye fixed upon us and not tremble?”

From the February issue: On the topic of cosmic fear, there is a touch of it in the king of Nineveh’s words: “Who knows, God may yet repent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we perish not” (Jon. 3:9). Ephraim Radner discusses the uses of the word “maybe” in Scripture, and how when it is “uttered in the prayers of those who beseech him, is not couched in assertions, but conveys readied openness: Here am I, with whatever hopes I have, and I present myself to the one who will do what he will do, knowing only that he who does what he does is the one who is my God, the maker of heaven and earth.” 

Upcoming Events

• February 1, 2026: Second Annual Neuhaus Lecture at the New College of Florida: “Recovering the University’s Soul” ft. Bishop Robert Barron | Sarasota, FL. Register here

• February 3, 2026: Second Annual Angelicum Aquinas Lecture: “A Conversation with the Theologian of the Papal Household” ft. Fr. Wojciech Giertych, O.P. | New York, NY. Register here.

• February 10, 2026: The Protestant Mind newsletter launch by Dale Coulter | Subscribe here.

• March 5, 2026: Annual D.C. Lecture: “Our Crisis is Metaphysical” ft. Mary Harrington | Washington, D.C. Register here.

Until next time,

VIRGINIA AABRAM

Newsletter Editor