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The Spirit of Vatican I

Russell Hittinger

Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Churchby john w. o’malleybelknap, 320 pages, $24.95 In 1860 Pope Pius IX lost the papal states, which had been...

An Integrated Humanist

Russell Hittinger

John Senior and the Restoration of Realismby francis bethel, o.s.b.thomas more, 452 pages, $34.99 H igher education has survived the end of the American century, if just barely. American...

The Three Necessary Societies

Russell Hittinger

Rerum Novarum (1891) begins with this sentence: “That the spirit of new things [revolutionary change], which has long been disturbing the nations of the world, should have passed beyond...

Abortion Before Roe

Russell Hittinger

Less than two years after the citizens of Washington voted by referendum to uphold the state’s prohibition of physician-assisted suicide, a federal judge invalidated the statute as unconstitutional. In...

All Together Now

Russell Hittinger

Biblical Natural Law: A Theocentric and Teleological Approach by Matthew Levering Oxford, 260 pages, $110 The Dominican philosopher Fergus Kerr observes that natural law is “currently perhaps the most...

Examination of Conscience

Russell Hittinger

The Problem of Natural Law by Douglas?Kries Lexington, 214 pages, $25.95 The decade after the Second World War witnessed a small boom of interest in traditional natural-law thinking. The...

Two Thomisms,
Two Modernities

Russell Hittinger

The past century and a half of papal teaching on modern times often seems a tangle: any number of different strands—theology, Thomistic ­philosophy, social theory, economics—all snarled together. And...

Persons and Rights

Russell Hittinger

Who is My Neighbor? Personalism and the Foundations of Human Rights by Thomas D. Williams The Catholic University of America Press, 342 pages, $69.95 When the Christian churches incorporated...

Unreasonable Observers

Russell Hittinger

The Supreme Court and Religion in American Life by James Hitchcock Princeton University Press Vol. I: The Odyssey of the Religion Clauses. 232 pp. $29.95. Vol. II: From “Higher...

Gibson’s Passion

Russell Hittinger Elizabeth Lev

From mosaics and music to paintings and plays, the arts have proven to be a mighty vehicle for retelling the Bible and bringing its stories vividly before our senses....

The Sociality of Society

Russell Hittinger

The Common Good and Christian Ethics by David Hollenbach Cambridge University Press. 269 pp. $23 paper It is practically axiomatic for Catholic social doctrine that there are common goods...

Reluctant Saint

Russell Hittinger

No saint has been the subject of more hagiography than Francis of Assisi, and no founder has had his or her legacy more determined by biographers. Unlike Benedict, Francis...

A History of the Popes, 1830–1914

Russell Hittinger

A century ago Leo XIII welcomed pilgrims to Rome for the Holy Year of 1900. While expressing gladness at the piety of the pilgrims, Leo admitted that his pontificate...