Books
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June 17, 2013
When I began to read this intriguing book about the crisis of sexual abuse of children that corrupted the Catholic church in the United States in the second half of the 20th century, I could not imagine why the author, Michael D’Antonio, began it with an account of the fall of papal Rome to Italian national troops at the battle of Porta Pia in 1878. That seemed an odd place and time to start a book about the American church in the late 1900s and early 2000s...
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June 17, 2013
Only the future is certain—the past continues to change.” This Russian proverb of unknown provenance has particular relevance to American foreign policy toward China in World War II and thereafter. John Paton Davies Jr., John Carter Vincent and John Stuart Service, all foreign service officers, dubbed “the three Johns” by some wag, would have to be near the top of the list of those who had a hand in shaping that policy.
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Tenth of December, a collection of short stories by George Saunders, is the Catholic Book Club selection for May 2013. The book club moderater, Kevin Spinale, S.J., took part in a conversation with the author by email.
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June 3-10, 2013
“I have the right to be unlimited.” So asserts a commercial currently running on network television, the “I” referring to the U.S. citizen-consumer.
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June 3-10, 2013
America’s former editor in chief, Thomas J. Reese, S.J., described our new pope recently in The National Catholic Reporter as one who had previously been “a little-published, low-profile Latin American archbishop.” In other words, we know relatively little about him, even though he has had a long career in the church.
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June 3-10, 2013
In the Epilogue to his From the Jaws of Victory, a narrative about Cesar Chavez and the farm workers movement, the labor historian Matt Garcia repeats a line from John Ford’s classic western, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence.” Although Ransome Stoddard (played by Jimmy Stewart), received credit for killing the notorious criminal Valence, he did not actually kill him. This unearned and undeserved notoriety nevertheless enabled Stoddard to leverage his...
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May 27, 2013
Athanasius Kircher was a German Jesuit who taught, wrote and ran a museum at the Roman College in the mid-1600s. He was famous in his time, sought out and consulted. His more than 40 books, folio-sized and thick, were rich in engraved illustrations. They covered subjects from magnetism to light and sound, from languages to Egyptology, from China to Italian geography. His popular museum gathered specimens sent to Rome by missionaries in Asia, Africa and...
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May 27, 2013
Those for whom San Francisco represents a leftist and left-coast city may be surprised to learn, as William Issel contends was true for the century from 1890 to 1990, that it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of the Catholic Church to San Francisco politics and culture. For much of that period, few important decisions were made without passing them through the chancery office. Although San Francisco Catholics made up only a third of the city’s population, they amounted to 68...
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May 27, 2013
In Sacred Dread Brenna Moore offers a fascinating account of the life and times of Raïssa Maritain, one of the more hidden, yet highly influential figures of the intellectual revival known as the renouveau catholique. Married to the prominent Catholic theologian Jacques Maritain, the Jewish-born Raïssa converted to the Catholic Church in 1909 and spent much of her life pursuing a spiritual life through silence, prayer, the reading of mystical texts and exchanges with important...
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May 20, 2013
For years, American newspapers have reported on the clashes between Israel and its neighboring countries. Similarly, coverage has extended to the challenging situation facing Jews and Arabs within Israel’s own borders. Only recently have we begun to hear of an equally pressing concern for many Israelis—namely, the rising tensions between Israel’s Haredim and the rest of its citizens. The term “Haredim” refers to a number of ultra-orthodox groups that reject...