Mary Ann Glendon has written a very diplomatic account of her service in the courts of three popes. It seems that nothing that she encountered necessarily surprised her, but she felt like a “stranger in a strange land,” at a time in history that Bishop Fulton Sheen not all that long ago labeled the “end [...]
Our modern urbanised arrangement of vast groups of human beings—in which the city is master and the country servant—organized through tokens (money) rather than through realities—are undeniably the proximate occasion of war. Old Principles and the New Order, by Vincent McNabb, O.P. (224 pages, Cluny Media) “Jesus…seeing the city wept over it saying: If thou [...]
No survey of contemporary literature can call itself complete today which ignores Catholic literature. And this not only because of the promise it holds out for a complete renovation of the arts, but also because of its many distinguished writers and its not inconsiderable critical and creative work in all departments of literature. The Catholic [...]
Like their British counterparts, the American Jacobites bitterly criticized the damage done to the working class and cities by the industrial system and listening to their neo-feudal critiques one sees similarities with Progressivism and Populism. While these latter movements analyzed from the perspective of the political left, the Jacobites did so from the political right. [...]
Joseph Pearce's "The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful" is a perfect textbook for history classes in Catholic schools, homeschoolers, and anyone concerned to transmit an overview of Catholic history and culture. The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: History in Three Dimensions, by Joseph Pearce (300 pages, Ignatius Press, 2023) The best way to [...]
When it comes to the American family, the day is late, and the damage done has been great. In urging men and women to forge strong families, author Brad Wilcox is fighting what amounts to a rear-guard action, but he believes that this is the only way to save civilization. Get Married: Why Americans Must [...]
Kate Montclair is dying. She has arrived at late middle age loveless, childless, and having failed to achieve the career dreams of her youth. Now diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, she sees the next fourteen months of suffering as an intolerable prospect. Kate is desperate—not only for a miracle cure, but for some sense [...]
The kingdom of heaven would not appear before the eyes of men with a crash of thunder and a blaze of lightning. It would begin, in itself and in each man’s heart, humbly, almost insignificantly, as small as the mustard seed. Only Son, by Walter Farrell, O.P. (226 pages, Cluny Media) “And His mother and [...]
“Good Friday is not just one day of the year,” Fr. Richard John Neuhaus writes in "Death on a Friday Afternoon. " “It is a day relived in every day of the world, and of our lives in the world.” There is “no denying that the cross is surrounded by glory,” wrote Fr. Richard John Neuhaus in Death [...]
Education follows the same law as the physical universe, which is sustained and carried on in dependence on certain centres of power and laws of operation. Education has its history in Christianity, and its doctors or masters in that history. A Benedictine Education, by John Henry Newman (160 pages, Cluny Media) As the physical universe [...]
Catholic literature, when we discover it coming into being in the mid-nineteenth century, is a literature of protest against the course being followed by European society. Its writers were not very numerous, nor did the typical Victorian man see any particular significance in their opposition to Liberalism, the anti-intellectual Romantic aesthetic, scientific naturalism, and the [...]
Tomie DePaola may not have been a saint himself, but he recognized them, venerated the love of God in their lives, and drew them in such a way that we can see that love shining through his friendly folk art icons. Through the Year with Tomie DePaola, text by Catherine Harmon and John Herreid, illustrations [...]
If our hearts were truly not in this world but in heaven, all the torments that the world could devise would give us no pain. Let us therefore send our hearts to heaven by sending our wealth there. A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, by Thomas More (248 pages, Cluny Media) XIII. Concerning the wise [...]
“Old books” speak to the times, often in more profound ways than “new books.” Christopher Dawson's "Beyond Politics" is just such a book. It diagnosed in 1939 the cultural situation in which the book appeared, and its diagnosis is apropos to the cultural situation today. Here’s the front story followed by the more important back [...]