When Newman Left Oxford

by Grazie Pozo Christie

Newman's conversion to Catholicism was nothing short of a personal cataclysm, a white martyrdom. Continue Reading »

3 Oct 2023

The Pope Visits Marseille

by Pierre Manent

The Church’s respect for the nations derives from her respect for human communities. Continue Reading »

2 Oct 2023

LETTERS FROM THE SYNOD - 2023: #1

Edited by Xavier Rynne II

One of the most important tasks of Synod-2023 will be the clarification of its own specific character and authority—and just what is meant by “synodality.” Continue Reading »

2 Oct 2023

Letters

by Various

It was good to see Mark Movsesian (“Defining Religion in the Court,” June/July 2023) tackle the issue of judicial religious exemptions for the increasing numbers of religious Nones among us. But I don’t think his guideline for distinguishing “religious” claims from other, conscientious . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Oct 2023

An Offer We Must Refuse

by Michael W. McConnell

In his masterwork, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche’s mythic hero carries a message—“God is dead!”—throughout the earth, in a parody of the Gospels, calling it his “gift” to mankind. The book begins with an encounter between Zarathustra and a holy man who lives . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Oct 2023

God and the Bomb

by Liel Leibovitz

The best movie you’ll see this year—or, if I’m being honest, this decade—is about two men having a protracted argument about God. If you merely watch the trailer, you may walk away with the erroneous impression that Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s magnum opus, is about the . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Oct 2023

The Road to Stella Maris

by Valerie Stivers

When Cormac McCarthy died in June at age eighty-nine, the news touched off grief and adulation such as contemporary literary authors rarely inspire. Musicians, scientists, conservatives, Catholics, all have claimed him. One man circulated and posted the notes he’d taken after a series of phone . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Oct 2023

We Are Repaganizing

by Louise Perry

There’s a very short and very brutal poem by the Scottish poet Hollie McNish, written in 2019 and titled “Conversation with an archaeologist”: he said they’d found a brothel on the dig he did last night I asked him how they know he sighed: a pit of babies’ bones a pit of newborn babies’ . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Oct 2023

Leisure and Liberality

by Elizabeth C. Corey

Conservative commentators have long bemoaned the proliferation of “studies” fields in the university. Women’s and gender studies are well known, but now students can take courses in topics as unusual as “surf studies” and “fat studies.” Given all the boring lectures that undergraduates . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Oct 2023

The Church’s Revolutions

by Richard Rex

In 1489 the Roman Catholic Church felt, and was, hemmed into a corner of the world. The view from Rome was of Africa and Asia long lost to heretical churches or to Islam, and Europe divided between Catholicism and Orthodoxy (itself seen as heretical), while Ottoman power advanced relentlessly up the . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Oct 2023