An eminent British scholar of Buddhism took occasion in a recent essay to observe that contemporary Western university students are more likely to be taught about Hinduism than about the variety of Christian denominations. He gave one ominous example: “What . . . do our teachers of Christianity . . . . Continue Reading »
Toward the end of Vatican Council II (1962-1965), John Courtney Murray, S.J., in the company of other clerics, concelebrated mass with Pope Paul VI. Like most other Americans who were in St. Peter’s at the time, I felt that it was a much-deserved and long-overdue public ecclesiastical . . . . Continue Reading »
The Book of Legends/Sefer Ha-Aggadah:Legends from the Talmud and Midrashedited by hayim nahman bialik and yehoshua hana ravnitzkyschocken, 897 pages, $75 Anthologies are frequently described as “treasure troves” of this or that. But The Book of Legends really is a treasure trove . . . . Continue Reading »
Slowly: out of that sleep that numbs the knife edge, I come home to a various world, to faces and voices, To a blur of angels at this keep, awaiting. Vague prophecies of life somewhat lasting, A testing of steadying heartbeat, of firm susperation. Such is the welcomed review of my waking, I, who . . . . Continue Reading »
“It is sometimes given to us, this lovely emptiness, and then the Holy Spirit can fill it . . . .” Madeleine L’Engle . . . and it happens, too, when words upon the printed page fall into place, and fit the moment and the heart and, by undivided Grace, what lies within, what lies . . . . Continue Reading »
With our cameras and crumpled clothes we wait for the bus. We rush to each “beauty spot” through narrow streets, observing signs whose alphabet we fail to comprehend. Pretty girls are scattered like rain. We pass students on bikes, old people stooped over bundles. The new “good life” of . . . . Continue Reading »
Fathers and Sons in Black and White After having read the article by Russell E. Saltzman entitled “Better Than Their Fathers” in your October 1992 issue, I’m a bit puzzled. Why did the First Things editorial hoard accept this piece? Other than the fact that it was written by a Lutheran . . . . Continue Reading »
Especially in America, when we think of the Catholic intellectual tradition we tend to think exclusively of the many varieties of Thomism. And for the decades between Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879) and the Second Vatican Council, this equation was largely accurate. Before . . . . Continue Reading »
The source of the advertisement above is not P. G. Wodehouse, nor Anthony Trollope, nor even Mark Pattison. It appeared in the Cambridge University Reporter—in 1973. The eleven essays assembled by George Marsden and Bradley Longfield on the demise of university patronage of religion in . . . . Continue Reading »
America’s Constitutional Soul by Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. Johns Hopkins University Press, 236 pages, $32 In this collection of characteristically brilliant essays, Harvey C. Mansfield Jr., one of our nation’s most eminent conservative political theorists, defends the American Constitution as . . . . Continue Reading »
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