Various

Purgatorial Conformity Gary Anderson (“Is Purgatory Biblical?” November) gives a capable defense of the doctrine of purgatory based on subtle themes in the Old Testament and the Acts of the Apostles, but he makes no reference to the gospels. A far more explicit biblical case for the . . . . Continue Reading »

Enlightened Monks: The German Benedictines 1740“1803 ?by Ulrich L. Lehner? Oxford 356 pages, $99 As a professor of the religious history of modernity at Marquette University, Ulrich Lehner has focused his recent scholarship on the Catholic responses to the European Enlightenment. In . . . . Continue Reading »

• “You can’t come in without going out, kids. Always go to the funeral.” So Deirdre Sullivan’s father taught her. For her, she said, speaking on NPR, going to funerals was partly a duty and partly a matter of learning to do things for others when doing them wasn’t . . . . Continue Reading »

Tradent and Traitor I am disappointed that my former colleague Leroy Huizenga wrote and that First Things published a review of the updated New International Version (“The Collins Bank Bible,” October) that is biased and (apparently) uninformed about translation. Restriction in my word . . . . Continue Reading »

• The Italian government is trying seven seismologists for manslaughter because they didn’t predict an earthquake in 2009 that killed over 300 people. We think the court should put the tectonic plates on trial too”and if they’re found guilty, put them in chains. • A . . . . Continue Reading »

Julian of Norwich, Theologian by Denys Turner Yale, 262 pages, $40 The fourteenth-century anchorite Julian of Norwich has attracted scholarly interest as one of only a few medieval female authors, while her texts born of sixteen visions from God make her work attractive to those interested in . . . . Continue Reading »

developing status Christopher Kaczor (“Equal Rights, Unequal Wrongs,” August/September) echoes a fallacious argument now popular among pro-life advocates. If human development affected moral status, the story goes, then killing an adult would be worse than killing a teenager, which in . . . . Continue Reading »

• Some of the names are haunting: Once, Chance, Lost. Others are haunting in a different way: Harmony, Melody. Wonderful. These are names parents gave children who lived only a few hours after birth and died in the hospital. Many of these dying children, says a nurse whose story appeared in . . . . Continue Reading »

Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East“West Unity by Adam A. J. Deville Notre Dame, 280 pages, $38 In Orthodoxy and the Modern Papacy , the author, a member of the Ukrainian Catholic Church who teaches theology at the University of St. Francis in Fort Wayne, . . . . Continue Reading »

doubting thomas on lying Janet E. Smith is to be commended for the deference she shows St. Augustine and St. Thomas (“Fig Leaves and Falsehoods,” June/July). Her own position, however, is not without significant precedent in Catholic tradition. Blessed John Henry Newman’s Apologia . . . . Continue Reading »