Conceiving of our deepest selves in terms of neuroses and traumas sends us continually back on ourselves in a way that may reproduce rather than redress our anguish.
“When I started writing this review, I resolved to avoid the mawkish, almost elegiac tone that often seeps into essays about Scialabba. As you can see, I’ve failed.”
From 2016: Francis offers a practical approach to the challenges of married love that gives us a surprisingly moving exhortation to a courageous way of life.
John McGreevy’s book is a gripping history of the modern Catholic Church, an institution at once a stolid purveyor of tradition and an agent of revolutionary change.
Paul Morland’s latest book shows that despite living longer, healthier lives, people are less willing to have children now than at any time in history.
Traditionalism can seem trendy and countercultural, but it is the constancy, not the theatricality, of the Church that offers meaning in a secular world.
From the archives: In entering into the mystery of all saints and all souls, we can't be sure what we'll encounter but we embrace fear and obscurity even as we hope.
Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule does not compartmentalize or soft-peddle his Catholicism. But his ‘integralism’ project should not be called Catholic.
Hagia Sophia’s history as a church, mosque, and museum makes it a unique cultural bridge, but now it is also a symbol of the populist threat to religious minorities.
The latest manifesto from archbishop Viganò descends into intellectual and moral farce, when what the world really needs from the church is true gravitas.
A new social document from the Orthodox Church brings the political responsibilities of the church to the fore, tackling inequality, refugees, and many other topics.
Set in a miserable dystopia, Houellebecq’s latest novel is both thought-provoking and wearying, fronted by a hypercynical yet dangerously nostalgic narrator.
I have known Buttigieg since I taught him at Harvard. One question animated him: how could Americans unite politically when their culture was increasingly polarized?
Theodore Roszak’s work was more than an apologia for 60s counterculture. It was one of the era’s most impassioned attempts to revitalize the utopian imagination.
If the hierarchy wants to reclaim some moral authority, shaping a better Catholic narrative in public life is necessary. Pace Charles Chaput, it must be inclusive.
The debate is not whether modern paganism is real, but where it lives, how it appears, and what it does. In contemporary politics, it's cruelty and violence.
William Blake critiqued the Enlightenment, industrialization, and the expansion of the British empire. His work shines at the Tate as the shadows of Brexit loom.
