Religion in the Public Square I found a number of the statements in the symposium “Judaism and American Public Life” (March) thoughtful and provocative. An important distinction, however, was left undrawn or at least inadequately drawn both by the classical separationists and by those whom we . . . . Continue Reading »
The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracyby David CannadineYale University Press, 813 pages, $39.95 As might be expected of a book whose title echoes Gibbon’s magnum opus, David Cannadine’s history of the British aristocracy since 1875 is long, exhaustive, wide-ranging, and anecdotally . . . . Continue Reading »
A calm, comprehensive, and utterly devastating critique of evolution elevated to the level of religious faith. Johnson of the University of California, Berkeley, brings a lawyer’s keen mind to dissecting the arguments that sustain evolution as one of the more overweening orthodoxies in . . . . Continue Reading »
Maybe we have been too hard on the editorial page of the most influential of our parish newspapers. Over the years, the New York Times’ editorial writers have been indifferent or hostile to the role of religion in our common life. Any impingement of religion on spheres that . . . . Continue Reading »
I propose a “rereading” of Pope Leo’s Encyclical by issuing an invitation to “look back” at the text itself, but also to “look around” at the “new things” that surround us, very different from the “new things” at the final decade of the last . . . . Continue Reading »
Those who were once called atheists are now the most reliable defenders not of the gods but of the good reasons for this regime of ordered liberty. Such people are the best citizens not despite but because their loyalty to the civitas is qualified by a higher loyalty. . . . . Continue Reading »