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Articles
Midtown Art for a Midtown Cathedral
Last month, New York archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan unveiled a new painting for St. Patrickโsโthe largest work of art commissioned in the cathedralโs 146-year history. Journalists celebrated the work...
My Family and Other Gnostics
A funny story is almost never improved by an assiduous concern for facts. Case in point: Gerald Durrellโs marvelous My Family and Other Animals, one of the glories of...
Jane Austen Against the Smartphone
On this day in 1813, Englandโs most beloved novel was published. Pride and Prejudice has become the quintessential tale of a supremely suitable marriage joined to dazzling wealth, but...
The Independent Bookstore Versus Amazon
Politicians talk about helping small businesses. But what can they do? During the Covid lockdowns, one third of all American small businesses closed. They were already struggling. In Steubenville,...
Can the Ignatius Study Bible Save Biblical Studies?
The Ignatius Catholic Study Bibleโa Bible decades in the making, under the editorship of Steubenville scholars Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitchโrecently arrived in our bookstore. Students from the new...
The Enduring Essence of the Mets
I grew up in working-class New York City in the 1980s, which means I grew up with the โ86 Mets. The Mets, founded in 1962, had an unfair reputation...
The Orwellian Evolution of Banned Books Week
This week is โBanned Books Week,โ a fact being advertised at libraries and booksellers across the country. A sweet savor of past respectability still clings to the observance, which...
Good News from an Independent Bookshop
A year and a half ago, our cityโs one bookshop went up for sale. My wife and I bought it. The place had 20,000 books, a good music system that probably played...
Marlene Dietrichโs War on Nature
For some people, a timely warning can avert disaster. For others, it is a prophecy. The 1930 film Morocco, starring Marlene Dietrich as the nightclub singer Amy Jolly, is...
The Men Behind the Met
My grandfather died before I was born, and he remains to me a mostly mysterious figure. As is true of many people born poor who are committed to bettering...
I Bought A Haunted Bookshop
If you are ever in Steubenville, Ohio, that plucky burg of seedy steel mills and fresh-faced Catholic youth, it is to be hoped that you may chance upon the...
Sinรฉad OโConnorโs Cross
Sinรฉad OโConnor, the troubled Irish singer-songwriter, died in July at age fifty-six. No cause of death has been announced, but it is fair to note that at times she...
Angel of New York
On days when the world to me is desolation; when I cannot sit in my seat, or do any productive labor; when I have a terrible desire to be...
Rembert Weakland, Proud Vandal
Rembert Weakland, former archbishop of Milwaukee and the first American to serve as primate of the Benedictine Order, passed away earlier this week at the age of ninety-five. He...
Remembering Fr. Reginald Foster (1939โ2020)
On December 25, shortly after midnight, while Catholics all over the Midwest were attending midnight mass, Fr. Reginald Thomas Foster, O.C.D., passed away in a Milwaukee nursing home, just...