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Letter to an Aspiring Theologian

Iwas delighted to receive your letter asking about the best route to becoming a theologian. Let me confess up front: I’m still in via myself. My business card should identify me not as research professor but perpetual pupil of theology, though if it did, you probably wouldn’t be . . . . Continue Reading »

Failing in Formation

The enrollment drop in American Catholic schools—from 5.2 million students in the 1960s to 2.5 million in 1990 to today’s 1.8 million—is a plunge of Syrian magnitude. In the last ten years, 1,336 Catholic schools have been either closed or consolidated. Meanwhile, bishops have been . . . . Continue Reading »

Soloveitchik the Zionist

Rabbi, if only I knew our suffering was paving the way for the Messiah,” cried a Jewish refugee to R. Hayyim Soloveitchik of Brest-Litovsk shortly before his death in World War I–era Warsaw. R. Hayyim rebuffed him, questioning whether it was self-evident that the advent of the Redeemer justified . . . . Continue Reading »

Fenton Returns

The Church of Christ:  A Collection of Essays by Monsignor Joseph C. Fenton by joseph clifford fenton edited with an introduction by christian d. washburn cluny, 362 pages, $25.95 Laying the Foundation:  A Handbook of Catholic Apologetics and Fundamental Theology by joseph clifford fenton . . . . Continue Reading »

Job’s Children

In S. Y. Agnon’s 1939 novel A Guest for the Night, one of the protagonists, Daniel Bach, recounts his loss of faith. Throughout World War I, as a soldier in the trenches, he had been meticulous about donning his tefillin to recite his daily prayers. Until one morning, the tefillin . . . . Continue Reading »

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