June/July 2025

Letters
Brad East’s “Goldilocks Protestantism” (April 2025) contains a disturbingly innovative usage of the terms “evangelical” and “catholic”…
Saving Christian Europe
Christianity made Europe,” Georges Bernanos writes in The Great Cemeteries Under the Moon. “Christianity is dead. Europe…
Francis in Full
By common consensus, Jorge Mario Cardinal Bergoglio won the papacy by means of an intervention he made…
The Future of Reading
More is read now in a year than was read before in a hundred years.” So declared…
Is America a Creedal Nation?
All civilizations, like all individuals, have flaws. The Christian civilization of Church and empire had flaws. America,…
A Time of Revival
The winds of Christian renewal are gathering strength. The Bible Society in Great Britain recently conducted a…
How Obergefell Failed
On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, announcing a…
The Next Pope
As I write, the Chair of St. Peter sits empty. It’s difficult to assess the significance of…
The Return of Jewish Theology
I ‘ve often been told that Jews don’t “do theology.” A quick glance at The Guide for…
While We’re At It
I’ve come to see that early Christian theology is more rabbinic than Platonic. Better: It involves a…
An Evangelical in Italy
How does an evangelical—not joined with the Church in Rome, but committed to one holy, catholic, and…
Classical Renewal by Research
The research pursued these days in university humanities departments does not, as a rule, enjoy high esteem…
The Minecraft Effect
Jews, the late Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik observed, were given the Torah at Sinai not as mere…
Angels and Kingdoms
We are familiar with the “disenchantment” thesis about modern culture. When Max Weber suggested it in the…
Why Twain Endures
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Sam Clemens (not yet “Mark Twain”) didn’t know where…
Zoning Out
In an era in which the American dream slips ever further from the grasp of the common…
Jesus After the Critics
Miracles and Wonder:The Historical Mystery of Jesusby elaine pagelsdoubleday, 336 pages, $30 Quests for the “historical Jesus”…
Creating U.S. Catholicism
The World and Work of Father John J. Burke:A Mystic in Actionby douglas j. slawsonst. augustine’s, 600…
Briefly Noted
Gratitudeby dietrich von hildebrand, balduin v. schwarz, joseph ratzinger, and romano guardinihilderbrand, 144 pages, $12.95 The raging…
Greetings on a Morning Walk
Blackberry vines, you hold this ground in the shade of a willow: all thorns, no fruit. *…
An Outline of Trees
They rise above us, arching, spreading, thin Where trunk and bough give way to veining twig. We…
Fallacy
A shadow cast by something invisible falls on the white cover of a book lying on my…