David Mills

Advance notice for next January’s New York Encounter , a three-day conference sponsored by the Catholic group Communion and Liberation. It will be held in New York January 17th to 19th and is, very nicely, free. Among the highlights are a talk on alienated youth by Christian Smith, the Notre Dame . . . . Continue Reading »

Here in New York the votes in the primary elections for mayor, city council, and comptroller are almost finished being counted. Christine Quinn, once thought to have a lock on the election, will not even make the Democratic runoff if there is one. Reading the news stories brings  you to . . . . Continue Reading »

Matthew Schmitz has already pointed readers to Books & Culture’ s need for supporters to pledge a lot of money by Monday to keep publishing. Let me add my own encouragement. Books & Culture has an important place, a place only it can fill, in the world — the shrinking world . . . . Continue Reading »

“Conspiratorial theories of history are easy to create once you are prepared to ignore the realities on the ground, or regard those who do take them into account as part of the conspiracy too,” writes Ronald Radosh in a review of a new book called American Betrayal , by a conservative . . . . Continue Reading »

The bishop of Northampton will open the cause for the canonization of G. K. Chesterton, the head of the American Chesterton Society has announced, according to a tweet a friend forwarded. A story on this I have not been able to find on the web. But assuming it’s true: Here’s what his . . . . Continue Reading »

Something actually useful on the papacy, or at least enjoyable, from the New York Times : a guess the quote game  called “How Recent Popes Differ on Key Issues.” If one were to quibble, that “differ” in the title is ambiguous, and I’d guess that the  Times . . . . Continue Reading »

The late Robert Bellah’s work , like Philip Rieff’s, “revolves around a similar premise, and a similar problem,” wrote Wilfred McClay (a longtime member of our advisory council) in the  Chronicle of Higher Education in 2006, on the occasion of the publication of The . . . . Continue Reading »

• A friend, having attended a lecture on exoplanets (planets circling stars not our own) at the American Association for the Advancement of ­Science in Washington, reported that the lecturers were quite concerned with, nay excited by, the possibility that some of these planets might contain . . . . Continue Reading »

To be commended to your regular attention is the Get Religion site , the very useful and unique site that pursues what it calls “holy ghosts” , the traces and hints of religion in mainstream news stories and analyzes the major media’s treatment (sometimes good, but often clueless . . . . Continue Reading »

Or maybe more accurately a sabbath. The Sabbath is a very good thing, religious meaning aside, argues an Israeli writer in Why secular Jews need Shabbat . We need, he argues, a special day, a regular day set aside “when we do not work, do not earn a living, do not conduct business or add to our . . . . Continue Reading »