Last summer, if you were going to enroll in college at Washington State University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, UNC-Chapel, Michigan State, and a dozen other schools, you had an assignment to complete. You had to read Just Mercy, attorney Bryan Stevenson’s tale of a life devoted to social . . . . Continue Reading »
Dying Together
Clare Coffey, American Conservative
Meet the Cardinal who Recharges for Battle by Fasting from Food and Water
Jack Carrigan, Catholic Herald
Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism
Kirk Davis Swinehart, New York Times
Can Catholics Vote for a Socialist?
P. J. Smith, Semiduplex
Why Are So Many Newborns Still Being Denied Pain Relief?
George Dvorsky, Gizmodo
Liberalism and the Collapse of the University
Elliot Milco, Paraphasic
What Makes Great Detective Fiction, According to T. S. Eliot?
Paul Grimstad, New Yorker
We Have Seen His Glory: A Response to A Certain Philosophical Rejection of the Christian Faith
Edmund Waldstein, O. Cist., Sancrucensis
Donald Revell did not write Essay: A Critical Memoir for the essayists, the critics, or the memoirists. He wrote it for the poets. And a poet, for Revell, is any person who loves. A two-time winner of the PEN Center USA Award for poetry, Revell is a professor of English at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the lauded translator of Rimbaud’s Illuminations and A Season in Hell. Continue Reading »
Though mercy is a Christian virtue, our post-Christian society shies away from relying on it. Lenient criminal sentences, pardons, and debt forgiveness all seem to undercut the demands of justice and public safety. We now speak the language of rights, instead of mercy, to justify helping the needy. Social programs have displaced Christian charity, and generic do-gooder benevolence has supplanted mercy.
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You can always count on establishment liberals. On cue, the New York Times editors today commented on the Iowa caucus, speaking of Marco Rubio as trying “to put a younger and more charming face on the basic Republican message of anger, xenophobia, fear and hate.” The implication, of course, is . . . . Continue Reading »
What was Cathleen Kaveny smoking? Her recent column in Commonweal attacks First Things founder Richard John Neuhaus for “sowing division” among Catholics and reducing theological commitments to “mere instruments of political will.”I’m not interested in defending Neuhaus against the charge . . . . Continue Reading »
The recent deaths of Alan Rickman, David Bowie, and the Eagles' Glenn Frey prompted an outpouring of sorrow online. Why do we grieve when celebrities die? Is it just ‘misplaced grief,' as some say? Or is there a deeper reason why we mourn—and, indeed, should mourn—the famous? Continue Reading »
Coco Chanel had no precedent in fashion. Her forerunners were the saints who denounced society and attacked the flesh. In her unrelenting seriousness, her allergy to frivolity, her “puritanical blacks” (as she called them), we recognize the Calvin who conquered Paris. The most precious relics this dubious saint left behind are handbags, dresses, and jewelry. More affordable—and only slightly less compelling—is Paul Morand’s The Allure of Chanel.
I am old enough to remember David Bowie from his Ziggy Stardust days but was never much of a fan. Before his death, I couldn’t have named a single one of his songs. I, therefore, was surprised and fascinated by the outpouring of emotion that surrounded Bowie’s death. Jeffrey Blehar opines on . . . . Continue Reading »
Dispatch from Sundance
Alissa Wilkinson, Christianity Today
What Do Anti-Abortion Demonstraters Want (Besides An End to Abortion)?
Leah Libreso, Five Thirty Eight
The Trade-in Society
Alan Jacobs, American Conservative
Purity and Intelligible Light
Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., Sancrucensis
It's Time to Rebuild New York's Original Penn Station
Justin Shubow, Forbes
The Inside Story of the Turnpike Mass, from the Priest Who Led It
Fr. Patrick Behm, Church Pop
Does Europe Have a Future?
Daniel Johnson, Mosaic
The Ideal Marriage, According to Novels
Adelle Waldman, New Yorker
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