In graduate school, I was a teaching assistant for a course on postwar novels, and I observed over the course of two semesters that no one ever wrote a truly good paper on Ian McEwan’s Atonement or a truly bad paper on Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Something about . . . . Continue Reading »
Catesby Leigh notes in his essay “Monumental Contrast” (October) that the removal of the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial in New York City is a sign that the “monumental aesthetic” in public art is an “endangered species.” Those of us in the art world know only too well that in civic art the . . . . Continue Reading »
In “Why I Am a Baptist” (August/September), Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr. inadvertently gives the impression that Southern Baptists came together in 1845 in order to “establish mission boards and organize evangelism.” To those not intimate with the details of Baptist history, this could be . . . . Continue Reading »
I much appreciated Nathaniel Peters’s discussion of spiritual communion through the lens of William of Saint-Thierry (“Spiritual Communion,” June/July). The focus on the fact that the Eucharist does its work, after all, through God’s action (that is, the Holy Spirit) and not our own is a . . . . Continue Reading »
In September 1944, Helmuth von Moltke sat in Berlin’s Tegel prison, awaiting execution. The Nazis had arrested him for organizing the Kreisau Circle, a resistance group formed to plan a more democratic future Germany. Helmuth’s death drew near, yet, as his wife Freya wrote to him, “The best . . . . Continue Reading »
Good Things Out of Nazareth, a collection of previously unpublished letters, is a powerful reminder of the intensity of Flannery O’Connor’s Catholic faith. Continue Reading »
Christians and other members of minority religions in Pakistan face chronic hostility, harassment, and persecution. Continue Reading »
Sohrab Ahmari correctly identifies many of the pathologies haunting liberal order in the West (“The New American Right,” October), which some on the right have been reluctant to acknowledge. Indeed, more conservatives should be challenging the fragile premises of the . . . . Continue Reading »
Death Penalty Sad to say, but as surely as night follows day, when Pope Francis speaks on doctrinal matters, confusion results. And so it is with the pope’s August revision to section 2267 of the Catechism. Although taught by the Church for two millennia as a legitimate punishment for . . . . Continue Reading »
Geoffrey Hill Like Garrick Davis (“Geoffrey Hill, Prodigal,” August/September), I too had the fortune of having Geoffrey Hill as an instructor. In 2004, I was a student in the Boston University writing seminars, and a few of us from the writing program took Hill’s Gerard Manley Hopkins seminar . . . . Continue Reading »
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