Stephen Mirarchi, Author at EpicPew

Stephen Mirarchi

Stephen Mirarchi (Ph.D., Brandeis University) is Assistant Professor of English at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. He is the author of the annotated editions of Myles Connolly's Mr. Blue, Dan England and the Noonday Devil, and The Bump on Brannigan's Head . His academic work has appeared in Christianity & Literature, Dappled Things, Religion & the Arts, Seminary Journal, Homiletic & Pastoral Review, and others. His journalistic work has been published in the Boston Globe, the National Catholic Register, Crisis, and others.

That Time a Demon Invaded the Confessional, and a Porn Addict was Released

One of my good friends, whom we’ll call Rob, tells the most extraordinary stories. That’s probably because he’s had a most extraordinary life. First exposed to porn at age six or seven, he quickly found that he couldn’t live without it—or so he thought. Turns out Rob has an obsessive personality—exactly the kind of person

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Is the Growing Hit Film “Searching” Anti-Christian?

At first a limited release, the missing-person thriller Searching has garnered rave reviews from the nation’s top critics. It’s an impressive showing for first-time director Aneesh Chaganty, a former Google employee. Critics have hailed the film as a contemporary take on a familiar “whodunit” story, and they point to John Cho’s performance as particularly moving.

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Can We Still Enjoy Military Thrillers After Changes by Pope Francis?

From the works of Brad Thor and Vince Flynn to Matthew Betley, military thrillers regularly top the bestseller lists. They’ve been popular since at least the 1950s, but after 9/11, readers have absolutely flocked to them. In light of Pope Francis’s recent change to the Catechism involving the inadmissibility of the death penalty, however, some

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Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Lessons on the Works of Mercy

You’ve rejoiced in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Puritan-bashing in “Young Goodman Brown.” You’ve reveled in his rejection of scientism and perfectionism in “The Birthmark.” You may even have shared some of Hester’s redemptive suffering in The Scarlet Letter. One of Hawthorne’s lesser-known works, however, takes on a whole different problem, one uncannily appropriate to our day. “The Procession

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