Marsden’s “biography of a book” traces the development of 'Mere Christianity' from a series of BBC radio talks into a religious "antidote for the attention to self."
In two new books, Hazareesingh and Bell incorporate American views into the 20th century struggles between republicans and Catholics in France over "basic freedoms"
Sarah Bakewell’s latest work subjects (mostly French) existentialist philosophers to scrutiny both as thinkers and as human beings marked by their moment in history.
Some conservatives tend to confuse fidelity with a one-size-fits-all legalism. If there's one thing you can say about Pope Francis, it's that he's no legalist.
To understand Francis and support the direction he has been setting for the Church, we need to think more deeply about the ways and means of “forgiveness.”
The exhortation is a valiant and powerful exercise in the Petrine ministry of upholding church unity. Is it another starting point in Francis's pontificate?
If John Paul II was the philosopher and Benedict XVI the theologian, Pope Francis is the poet pope, giving voice to the dreams and wisdom of migrants and the poor.
With Pope Francis lifting up what can be called social justice Christianity, clichés that religion lives on the right end of American politics might be overturned.
Slots, video poker, and other gambling machines are often described as games, but they're a sinful rejection of the goodness of the world and a failure to rejoice.
Paul Misner's new book goes beyond social and labor movements in the church to deal with papal and episcopal action vis-à-vis the great powers between 1914 and 1965.
The move to less philosophy is a mistake. Philosophy is utterly essential for an educated Catholic; pedagogically, anything less than two courses is inadequate.
Engagement with vexing questions is part of the life of a pilgrim church. It is strangely un-Catholic to assert that doctrine does not and cannot change.
Editors Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon contend that Nietzsche’s impassioned critique of 19th century education sheds light on the decline of education in the 21st.
Konrad Jarausch's history of Europe's recent past pursues a fundamental question—what is modernization? And is modern progress liberating for all, or still "dark"?
In Ta-Nehisi Coates’s interpretation of race in America, hope doesn't fit into the narrative—something James Baldwin, to whom he's compared, wouldn't leave out.
John Boyne’s new novel pays attention to the circumstances of priestly life in real-world Catholic Ireland, asking: How does one be a good priest under suspicion?
Anahid Nersessian argues that Romanticism dramatizes the “desirability of constraint.” Her book on how British Romantics imagined "utopia" powerfully does the same.
Current students are taught by lay people. Our teachers were Benedictine monks, and teaching only begins to describe the role those virtuous men played in our lives.
So this, I realized as I watched, was still a church of surprises. Vatican II lived on. A weight accumulated over thirty-five years dropped from from my shoulders.
Francis has introduced the possibility that the spotlight of moral judgment can can be shone back on those who make the judgments, and on their very act of judging.
Judas takes hold of Christ, pressing himself on him: arm, beard, lips. A soldier in gleaming armor goes for Christ’s neck. A young man flees: John the Evangelist.
In "Christian Human Rights," Samuel Moyn concedes that the modern human-rights movement is untethered from its Christian origins. Is this something to worry about?
While Franzen’s natural mode as writer is one of confident high spirits, in "Purity" his view of people is steeped in pessimism, and his characters are miserable.
Peter Mitchell's take on Charles Curran and the "dissident theologian" strike at Catholic University in 1967 presents a conspiracy so big it's literally incredible.
The bishops and the church as a whole are about to take an honest look at the gap between that which cannot be changed and that which can and sometimes ought to be.
The result of her years-long quest to find fellow victims of smear campaigns, Dreger's 'Galileo's Middle Finger' reveals a problem larger than political correctness.
Spanning almost James Agee's entire lifetime, these letters between author and his priest cover alcohol, God, poetry, childhood, and a “mouthful of sweet potato.”
Frank Bruni challenges elitist assumptions about what "counts" as a worthy education, and Fareed Zakaria defends the usefulness and versatility of the liberal arts.
When the priest said “The Mass is ended, alleluia,” she burst out laughing. As a guest at Mass, she sensed the beauty of Catholic worship, and also its strangeness.
Biographer Randy Boyagoda paints Richard John Neuhaus as an unusually ambitious and politically engaged priest as public intellectual—but is his narrative too tidy?
Readers write in on how academic, humanistic, and prophetic cultures should be balanced, when kids should be confirmed, and why nothing's better than the Eucharist.
Brooks thinks character is what’s missing in our self-centered society, yet has written a self-help book for an age he believes values the self much too highly.
Whether or not U.S. support for LGBT rights goes beyond the rhetorical, societies still viewing themselves as “under God” will bridle at this sudden turn about.
As Francis plans to overhaul the Holy See's media management, a bishop-psychotherapist is assigned to help remove "playboy priests" from an infamous Italian diocese.
The core liberal conviction about the Supreme Court still rings true: it is most constructive when power is used to vindicate the rights of beleaguered minorities.
In her new book, Jane Maienschein lays out the history of embryonic science—going back to Aristotle—hoping to answer an old question: When does a human life begin?
Amusing and engaging, Barney Frank's stories (from sixteen terms in Congress) tell what kinds of “inside politicking” informed the presidencies of LBJ through Obama.
