Amanda Shaw

Over at The Catholic Thing, Hadley Arkes reflects on the Born-Alive Infants’ Protection Act, and the revelatory role of Senator Obama. When it comes to predicting the ethical tone of an Obama presidency, it shouldn’t be hard to play prophet: The very point of the bill was to confer . . . . Continue Reading »

I’ve been reading Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop , struck by the austere beauty of the landscape she paints: In all his travels, the Bishop had seen no country like this. From the flat red sea of sand rose great rock mesas, generally Gothic in outline, resembling vast . . . . Continue Reading »

Much has been written on Alexander Solzhenitsyn over the last few weeks, but Harvey Mansfield’s reflections on the pointed Harvard speech , from the current issue of the Weekly Standard , are not to be missed. Some highlights: In perhaps the most interesting and original of . . . . Continue Reading »

The saga of uncovering Shakespeare’s religion continues with Joseph Pierce’s new book, The Quest for Shakespeare , and Robert Miola’s recent FT review, now available to non-subscribers. The tension runs high on both sides: At a conceptual level The Quest for Shakespeare repeatedly . . . . Continue Reading »

” Save the world! Stop having children! Such was the rather drastic solution to the problem of climate change proposed in an editorial in the prestigious British Medical Journal , no less, the other day.” As The Independent goes on to note , the paranoia of overpopulation is nothing . . . . Continue Reading »

A brief but troubling interview with the Republican nominee, posted by the Weekly Standard . “John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned,” says his campaign website , “and as president he will nominate judges who understand that courts should not . . . . Continue Reading »

Your favorite author on ” The Living Church: Revisiting Vatican II .” Here’s a taste: “Before and after”—that gets to the heart of most of the disputes about the council. Up through the 1980s, self-identified liberals routinely spoke of the “pre-Vatican II . . . . Continue Reading »

(A prime example of mendicant crowd-surfing.) But, more often, life as a friar is just plain down-to-earth: —Photos by Br. Maciej Chanaka, OP . . . . Continue Reading »

After you read our own essay about the “unshakable optimist,” of course! From Edward Ericson, coeditor of The Solzhenitsyn Reader , here is an excellent reflection on the cultural truth-telling of the great man. A taste: One of the exaggerations that many cultural sophisticates hold . . . . Continue Reading »

This letter came to me from David Akhviediani, a Georgian student I met in Kraków last month: Dear friends! The aim of this email is to raise the awareness of those crimes that are currently being conducted by Russian occupants in Georgia. Russian troops are continuing illegal occupation of . . . . Continue Reading »