The abortion debate has come to turn on the supposed opposition between those who see abortion as a deed that should be legally prohibited and those who present themselves, not as in favor of the contradictory but rather in favor of the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. That is, one … Read more
In the last days of September the Wethersfield Institute sponsored a conference on twentieth-century Catholic writers, a high point of which was the giving of an award for excellence to J.F. Powers. It is of course risky to involve as wry a writer as Powers in such festivities, and he may well get a comic … Read more
Sex continues to dominate theological dissent but the enemy grows older. The spectacle of sexagenarians tottering to the microphone to speak on behalf of the “sexually active” and even to make such activity the mark of maturity is one that awaits its Evelyn Waugh. In the meanwhile, books like Philip S. Kaufman’s Why You Can … Read more
Anyone who has watched the decline of Roman Catholic theology over the past several decades would have bet the ranch that theologians in our colleges and universities would react as they have to the publication of formulas for the Profession of the Faith and an Oath of Fidelity. If you expected this crowd to defer … Read more
A Peeping Thomist Gazes on the Contemporary Crisis The revival of Thomistic studies since Leo XIII’s Aeterni Patris in 1879 has owed much to such laymen as Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, Charles DeKoninck, Anton Pegis, Vernon Bourke, James Collins, Vince Smith, and John Oesterle. Many but not all of these thinkers were converts. When they … Read more
Television is the greatest single contributor to the trivialization of modern life. At first a spectator of, then an intruder into, now the fabricator of the events it shows us, television news has reduced political campaigning to the level of the advertising and promotion of products. We all know this. It is a cliche. How … Read more
The appearance of Flannery O’Connor’s collected works (edited by Sally Fitzgerald) in the prestigious Library of America is an event not only for Catholic literature in this country but quite simply for American literature. The volume contains O’Connor’s two novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away; her two story collections, A Good Man … Read more
If you or I had been in charge of providential planning for the effort to counter distorted versions of Vatican II and the Magisterium generally, it is doubtful that we would have cast a Yugoslav nun working in the streets of Calcutta or a cloistered Franciscan from Canton, Ohio in starring rolls. Yet it is … Read more
It is not of course true that only non-Catholics are interested in the intellectual patrimony of Catholicism, however tempting the thought may sometimes be. Take the case of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, a veritable Vesuvius of literature. How could nearly a hundred titles ever be forgotten? Yet, that evangelical colleges and Protestant publishing houses seemed for … Read more
The other day I saw in the back window of a sedan one of those yellow diamond-shaped signs which entertain drivers lucky enough to be next in line at a red light. The message of such signs was serious at first. Baby On Board. But this one was simply funny. Baby In Trunk. I laughed. … Read more
In the early 500s, Boethius wrote a theological tractate against two heresies, the Monophysite and the Nestorian. Monophysites held that Christ had only a divine nature and that his humanity had been swallowed up in it; Nestorians, in reaction, held that not only did Christ have both a divine and human nature, he was two … Read more
Last fall in Los Angeles I chaired a session at the meeting of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars which featured Marvin O’Connell, Leonard Kennedy, Mary Rousseau, and Thomas Langan on the general topic of the mission of the Catholic university. Since there is something of a gap between the ideal and the reality, the subsequent … Read more
If you lean out of skyscraper window holding a bag of fertilizer in one hand and a poet in the other and let go of both they will fall. Tennyson and a sack of 10-10-10 are equally values of the variable in the law of falling bodies. Man is a thing. But a thing who … Read more
Members of religious orders, when they write their names in books, preface it with ad usum, meaning they have the use of the volume, but do not own it. But surely owning books is only to have the use of them. Unless they were built in Alexandria, libraries survive their makers and possessors, as artifacts … Read more
The reason we have forgotten what it is to be a Christian, Kierkegaard wrote, is that we have forgotten what it is to be a man. Which can be restated thus: the reason we have lost the sense of the supernatural is that we have lost the sense of the natural. We pride ourselves on … Read more
What is most vivid in my mind about beginning this journal is the excitement I felt when Michael Novak first brought it up. He was thinking along the lines of a newsletter but almost immediately there formed in my mind visions of Commonweal and America as they once were and as I had long wished … Read more
It is easier to see the problems than to find good solutions to them. How often have we heard the clear teaching of the Magisterium distorted, sometimes even from the pulpit? How often have we seen variations introduced into the liturgy, as if we are all bored with the official rite and needed relief from … Read more
From time to time, it is useful to wonder what the Church in the United States would look like if the secular press — and such enigmas as the NCR — did not give disproportionate attention to the dissidents in our midst. I have been asked by journalists to explain the discrepancy between the enormous … Read more
The current issue of Critic magazine (no relation) features statements by various authors on their current projects and among the welcome news is that J. F. Powers has finished an as yet untitled new novel. I sometimes fear that a generation of Catholics has grown up without even knowing of Powers. In a way, this … Read more
In spring an old man’s thoughts turn to apocalypse, of course, but in recent years he finds that many have been there before him. Indeed, for much of my adult life I have been hearing dire predictions of the imminent end of all we hold dear. There is even a kind of comfort to be … Read more