So the fall semester is finally in sufficient order that I can return to blogging. I don’t imagine that I was particularly missed. But I’ll proceed on the assumption that at least some readers liked to alternate their reflections on the very serious matters we usually discuss with one . . . . Continue Reading »
My name has appeared on the masthead now for almost two months, but i have hesitated to pen an inaugural entry, especially since, unlike some of the others in the group, i have no full-fledged manifesto to announce. And as these things go the longer one waits, the more difficult it . . . . Continue Reading »
Lasch concluded that an emphasis upon mercy is perhaps the most difficult virtue for humans generally, and modern man especially, to sustain. And yet it is a message needing repetition and renewal, even in the face of likely failure. Hope demands nothing . . . . Continue Reading »
The Great Melody: A Thematic Biography and Commented Anthology of Edmund Burke by conor cruise o’brien university of chicago press, 602 pages, $34.95 At the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and 11th Street in Washington, D.C., a wandering tourist will find himself standing beneath the gaze of a . . . . Continue Reading »
To judge simply by the responses we have received, a good many readers did not like the editorial in the March issue, “Christians, Jews, and Anti-Semitism.” Some responses, we are sorry to say, gave all the appearances of reflecting the evil that the editors were intending to counter. On the . . . . Continue Reading »
Maybe we have been too hard on the editorial page of the most influential of our parish newspapers. Over the years, the New York Times’ editorial writers have been indifferent or hostile to the role of religion in our common life. Any impingement of religion on spheres that . . . . Continue Reading »
It seems unlikely that the Church of Nice People will have much to offer but bromides phrased in quaintly religious-sounding . . . . Continue Reading »
This Hemisphere of Liberty: A Philosophy of the Americas by michael novak aei press, 153 pages, $18.95 We are nearly two years into the post-Cold War era—an era as yet without a name—and we have awakened to the sobering reality that democracy is easier to desire than it is to sustain. . . . . Continue Reading »