Robert Royal

The pope has stepped up his rhetoric in favor of it. The retired cardinal archbishop of Washington recently expressed sweeping public support. The National Association of Evangelicals regularly issues policy statements outlining the urgency of action. But perhaps religious fervor for curbing global . . . . Continue Reading »

We often hear these days about the problems and misdeeds of “organized” religion. We much more rarely hear about the arrogance and downright atrocities of organized irreligion. Yet during the twentieth century, self-proclaimed scientific atheism in the form of communism killed 100 million . . . . Continue Reading »

The Aeneid by Virgil, translated by Robert Fagles Viking Adult, 496 pages, $40 We do not read Virgil much anymore. In part, because we no longer learn Latin and so do not seek out its writers, however famous and central to our culture they were once thought to be. But there is another, more serious . . . . Continue Reading »

In the usual historiography, the development of the West, like Caesar’s Gaul, is divided into three parts. The Greeks and their successors in Rome lie at the beginning of everything; the Middle Ages include the decline of the classical heritage, a cultural Dark Ages, and a brief period of . . . . Continue Reading »

Graham Greene was a great novelist of a special kind. Unlike many literary practitioners in this century, he did not experiment with language, subvert traditional narrative, or choose exotic subjects. He simply used the powerful imagination that led him to speak of his work as a “guided dream.” . . . . Continue Reading »

As Orson Welles famously remarked, playing the unscrupulous Harry Lime in the film The Third Man: “In Italy for thirty years, under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had . . . . Continue Reading »

Opus Dei: Leadership and Vision in Today’s Catholic Church By Vittorio Messori Regnery. 201 pp. $27.50 Beyond the Threshold: A Life in Opus Dei By Maria del Carmen Tapia Continuum. 364 pp. $29.95 First, a necessary disclaimer: the present writer has been invited to attend Opus Dei conferences, . . . . Continue Reading »

For the New York Times and most other mainstream media it has become axiomatic: De Catholicis, nil nisi malum. (Roughly: If it’s Catholic, bash it.) When the Catholic Church, allegedly ignoring human complexity and weakness, proclaims the indissolubility of marriage (on the basis of Christ’s . . . . Continue Reading »

It is a timeworn literary conceit, but some writers seem to be several people. There always exists some disparity, of course, between writers and their work. Yet a kind of multiple personality disorder keeps turning up in writers—and writers with a religious bent seem particularly susceptible, . . . . Continue Reading »

Cultures in Conflict: Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Age of Discovery by bernard lewis oxford university press, 101 pp., $16.96 Karl von Hapsburg, one of the heirs to the old Austro-Hungarian throne and a member of the European Parliament, is fond of telling a story about the deep connections . . . . Continue Reading »