The World as It Could Be: Catholic Social Thought for a New Generation by thomas d. williams crossroad, 240 pages, $24.95 What would the world be like, asks Thomas Williams in The World as It Could Be, if essential truths of the human person were universally acknowledged and respected and “all . . . . Continue Reading »
Jesus Christ, Eternal God:Heavenly Flesh and the Metaphysics of Matter by stephen h. webb oxford, 368 pages, $65 Could God be a material being? It may sound like a strange idea, yet it resonates with a great many theologians who reject “classical theism,” the broadly Platonist metaphysics of . . . . Continue Reading »
On February 6, Queen Elizabeth II marked her diamond jubilee, an achievement that Great Britain will celebrate throughout 2012. I am not a monarchist, but I’ll happily join in saluting the Queen, who embodies several qualities that are in short supply among 21st-century public figures. In one of a slew of diamond jubilee books, author Robert Hardman reports that Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, is awed by the Queen’s “gravitas.” … Continue Reading »
Front Porcher Patrick Deneen criticizes the critics of the HHS mandate for using the “dominant privatistic language of liberalism.” He agrees this is the prudent strategy, but believes it masks the deeper divide between Catholic and Modern political thought in general. Such a . . . . Continue Reading »
Her parents tired of locking her up before she tired of running away. Love mocks the locksmith, and love drove her on till the convent walls closed around her strong as a castle, and poverty made her as safe as wealth makes a queen. Francis the merchant’s son should have died in the streets of . . . . Continue Reading »
The Tigress of Forli: Renaissance Italy’s Most Courageous and Notorious Countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de’ Mediciby elizabeth levhoughton mifflin harcourt, 316 pages, $27 Immortalized by Botticelli in the Sistine Chapel, rumored to be the most beautiful woman in the world, the epicene . . . . Continue Reading »
There has been a lot of thoughtful commentary on the HHS Mandate the last couple of weeks. Ross Douthat and Yuval Levin argue that Obama levels the ‘little platoons’ of civil society in favor of expanding the power of the state. Here is Levin: “In this arena, as in a . . . . Continue Reading »
Leo Strauss is the thinker who in the last few decades has contributed the most to the renewed examination of the polarity between Athens and Jerusalem, reason and revelation. Tertullian famously stressed this contrast to the benefit of Jerusalem rather than Athens, but Strauss brings to the . . . . Continue Reading »
Popular talk of one’s “calling” betrays a crucial misunderstanding of discernment, a cardinal error that is entirely foreign to the great tradition of the Church. Continue Reading »
John Hall Wheelock, a minor twentieth-century poet—dubbed “the last romantic” in the title of his oral autobiography—captured movingly some of the reasons we desire more life, our sense (nevertheless) that a complete human life cannot mean an indefinitely extended one, and the pathos . . . . Continue Reading »
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