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A Failing Papacy

The current regime in Rome will damage the Catholic Church. Pope ­Francis combines laxity and ruthlessness. His style is casual and approachable; his church politics are cold and cunning. There are leading themes in this pontificate—­mercy, accompaniment, peripheries, and so forth—but . . . . Continue Reading »

Liberalism Against the Church

The Lost History of Liberalism:  From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century by helena rosenblatt princeton, 368 pages, $35 Liberalism, says Helena Rosenblatt, has grown ineffective as it has forgotten the role that public morality, virtue, and conceptions of the common good played in its . . . . Continue Reading »

The Caudillo

Franco:  Anatomy of a Dictator by enrique moradiellos i.b.tauris, 264 pages, $30 Not long after the successful Allied landings in Normandy in June 1944, Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain, removed a photograph of Adolf ­Hitler from his desk in the Pardo Palace in Madrid. He promptly replaced . . . . Continue Reading »

Excommunicate Cuomo

Cuomo, through his murderous support for abortion legislation, coupled with his consistent invocation of his own Catholic identity, has crossed over from private failing to public witness against the faith. Continue Reading »

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