Various

Tradition and the Rule of Faith in the Early Church: Essays in Honor of Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J. edited by Ronnie J. Rombs and Alexander Y. Hwang Catholic University of America, 351 pages, $39.95 Fr. Joseph Lienhard made his name sorting out the theological positions in the Arian controversy, and . . . . Continue Reading »

Theology From The Bench Richard Garnett celebrates the clarity that the Supreme Court’s recent Hosanna-Tabor decision purportedly brought to religion-clause doctrine (“Things Not Caesar’s,” March). Far from clarifying the doctrine, however, the court has muddled it, and there is . . . . Continue Reading »

Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis, and the Misrepresentation of Humanity by Raymond Tallis Acumen, 388 pages, $29.95 While acknowledging the progress neuroscience has made in helping us understand the brain, in his new book Aping Mankind Raymond Tallis directs his fire at neuroscience’s . . . . Continue Reading »

• We write this on Shrove Tuesday, with Ash Wednesday and Lent arriving tomorrow, and you will be reading this, those of you in liturgical churches, a few weeks into Lent. We hope you’re advancing in holiness. William F. Buckley is said to have answered someone who asked if he liked . . . . Continue Reading »

The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture by Gary Saul Morson Yale, 352 pages, $30 Perhaps it was as a diversion from writing books on Tolstoy and Dostoevsky that the author, a professor of Slavic languages at Northwestern, decided to write on the shortest of literary genres, the quotation. . . . . Continue Reading »

Disorder & Diseased As Stanton Jones shows (“Same-Sex Science,” February), the position that “gay is good” is a philosophical, not scientific, conclusion, and so must be argued on philosophical grounds. However, he makes a mistake in framing the question of the psychological . . . . Continue Reading »

Savonarola: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet ?by Donald Weinstein ?Yale, 400 pages, $38 No prophet is born in a vacuum. That is one of the many offered learned in Donald Weinstein’s excellent new book, Savonarola: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet . Weinstein, a professor . . . . Continue Reading »

• Being a Theodish heathen, and indeed the “First Atheling” (prince, in case you didn’t know) of a tribe called New Normandy”he even has “thralls””New York Republican city councilman Dan Halloran “could be the first elected official in the United . . . . Continue Reading »

developing status Christopher Kaczor (“Equal Rights, Unequal Wrongs,” August/September) echoes a fallacious argument now popular among pro-life advocates. If human development affected moral status, the story goes, then killing an adult would be worse than killing a teenager, which in . . . . Continue Reading »

Anything Goes ?by Theodore Dalrymple New English Review Press, 218 pages, $19.95 In much learning there is weariness of flesh . . . or, in the case of Theodore Dalrymple, stoical wit. A former prison doctor and hospital psychiatrist in London, presently a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, his wide . . . . Continue Reading »