Various

Fascism and Communism. By François Furet and Ernst Nolte. Translated by Katherine Golsan, with a preface by Tzvetan Todorov. University of Nebraska Press. 100 pp. $35. The late French historian François Furet’s magisterial 1995 book on communism and the drama of the twentieth . . . . Continue Reading »

Copyright (c) 2002 First Things 122 (April 2002): 2-7. Dostoevsky and Rome I enjoyed Rodney Delasanta’s “ Dostoevsky Also Nods ” (January). I also agree with Professor Delasanta on the profound depth of Dostoevsky’s insight into the Christian faith. However, I’m not sure . . . . Continue Reading »

Copyright (c) 2002 First Things 122 (April 2002): 7, 9, 20. The Slender Girl The morning slipping past the white Of curtains is a girl, slender As April in a wistful light, With naive air, unsure, tender, Offering herself like daffodils To cruelty from belated snow. A sudden bird quells doubt with . . . . Continue Reading »

Hitler and the Holocaust. By Robert S. Wistrich. Modern Library. 295 pp. $19.95. Robert Wistrich’s Hitler and the Holocaust starts out with great promise. The brevity of the text (240 pages, excluding notes) means that discussions are necessarily concise, and he relies on some controversial . . . . Continue Reading »

Avery Cardinal Dulles claims that on the question of religious freedom the difference between the nineteenth“century popes and the Second Vatican Council concerns means only (“ Religious Freedom: Innovation and Development ,” December 2001). The popes wanted a Catholic State whereas the . . . . Continue Reading »

When all roads led to Rome, unRoman ways made inroads into Rome so Rome’s ways changed. Now when strangers go to Rome, to do what Romans do, neither they nor Romans know what Romans do, to do, some even deeming it unRoman they once knew. ”Paul Lake . . . . Continue Reading »

The 1917 Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law. English translation and scholarly apparatus by Edward N. Peters. Ignatius. 813 pp. $49.95. Pope Pius X (1903-1914) put into the hands of Pietro Cardinal Gasparri the task of organizing a single code of canon law. The 1917 Code of Canon Law was a . . . . Continue Reading »

Darwin’s Morality Benjamin Wiker’s attack on me (“Darwin and the Descent of Morality,” November 2001) contains many errors. I will point out only a few. I have argued that a Darwinian science of the “moral sense” as rooted in human nature supports a conservative . . . . Continue Reading »

David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King By Baruch Halpern Eerdmans. 492 pp. $30 This book is, on the one hand, a witty and spirited defense of the historicity of the biblical figure of David. This is no small feat in a scholarly world populated by an ever more vocal group of . . . . Continue Reading »

War and Christian Doctrine No doubt every reader of Darrell Cole’s “Good Wars” (October 2001) was struck, as I was, by its eerie timeliness, appearing as it did just a few days after the attack on America September 11, 2001. But rather than link his essay with the devastation . . . . Continue Reading »