I appreciated Mark Bauerlein’s recent essay “System’s Failure” (November 2023) on some of the many flaws in “systemic bias.” There is, however, a much easier way to dismiss the whole enterprise out of hand: when proponents are unwilling to start with the government’s K–12 education . . . . Continue Reading »
Sooner or later, every generation begins to look backward. Instead of blaming present woes on present-day opponents, writers past middle age take the longer view of their lives. Not too long ago, such retrospectives in the Catholic world were dominated by those who had watched the Church change from . . . . Continue Reading »
Exactly a century ago, in his encyclical Studiorum Ducem commending the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, Pope Pius XI drew a biblical analogy: Just as it was said to the Egyptians of old in time of famine: “Go to Joseph,” so that they should receive a supply of corn from him to nourish . . . . Continue Reading »
De Lubac warned of the danger of transforming the search for the kingdom of God into a search for secular social utopias. The participants of the ongoing Synod on Synodality could learn from his Christocentric vision of the Church. Continue Reading »
Without de Lubac’s pioneering work, the key texts of Vatican II would not be so richly scriptural and patristic in content and style. Continue Reading »
If retrieval becomes the be-all of theology, theology is in danger of being reduced to an antiquarian, archaeological enterprise. All theology is historical, but theology cannot be only historical. Continue Reading »
Christian Dogmatics: Reformed Theology for the Church Catholicedited by michael allen and scott r. swainbaker, 416 pages, $36.99Reformed Catholicity: The Promise of Retrieval for Theology and Biblical Interpretationby michael allen and scott r. swainbaker, 176 pages, $21In his Essay on the . . . . Continue Reading »
Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians: From Chenu to Ratzinger by fergus kerr blackwell, 240 pages, $29.95 Over the last decade, a Scottish Dominican named Fergus Kerr has produced a series of books designed to orient readers to contemporary trends. In the 1997 Immortal Longings, he discussed a . . . . Continue Reading »
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