Russell Hittinger

Vatican I:  The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church by john w. o’malley belknap, 320 pages, $24.95 In 1860 Pope Pius IX lost the papal states, which had been held by his predecessors for a thousand years. Four years later he issued the Syllabus of Errors. The eightieth and . . . . Continue Reading »

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 colleges and universities are like a naval mothball fleet that’s still afloat but not seaworthy. Some schools . . . . Continue Reading »

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 the sphere of politics and made its influence felt in the cognate sphere of practical economics is not . . . . Continue Reading »

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 . . . . Continue Reading »

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 contested topic in Thomas Aquinas’ work.” In recent years, scholars have proficiently . . . . Continue Reading »

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 devastation and moral atrocities of the war, the rebuilding of European legal systems, the emergence of . . . . Continue Reading »

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 yet a little historical analysis may help loosen the knot. In fact, a careful reading . . . . Continue Reading »

Michael Burleigh’s study of European religion and politics requires us to imagine a very different Europe than the one we behold today—not the polity of bureaucrats in Brussels but a Europe of statesmen and revolutionaries who aimed at the most extravagant notions of national . . . . Continue Reading »

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 “human rights” as a philosophy and project, did they take on an ethic that corrupts their best moral . . . . Continue Reading »

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 Law” to “Sectarian Scruples.” 272 pp. $35. In the sport of religion jurisprudence, the cats sometimes . . . . Continue Reading »