On clement Street in San Francisco this spring, I did my usual prowl of the used-bookstores, but I also managed a couple of hours at McDonald’s downtown, a rather chaotic but rich used-bookstore off Turk or Ellis. There I found a book called The Ideal Reader: Selected Essays by Jacques Riviere. I had, perhaps in … Read more
This all started when I needed some sort of quotation suggesting that, lacking all else, civilization needed but two books, the Bible and Shakespeare. Searching my highly fallible memory, I vaguely recalled something that Scott Walter had written to me about a passage in A.N. Wilson’s book on Hilaire Belloc. According to my memory, this … Read more
In 1770, Boswell set down many pages of brief remembrances of what Samuel Johnson had said during that year. Johnson at one point, it seems, was speaking of “a certain Prelate.” This clerical gentleman evidently “exerted himself very laudably in building churches and parsonage-houses.” Johnson did not find him a man of much “professional learning,” … Read more
I believe … in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Recently, I heard from a young graduate student whom I did not know. He told me he was becoming a Catholic. In the process, he was taking instructions at a local parish. Evidently, there were a number of people also taking instructions. One … Read more
The Greyhound San Francisco Express left from Harrah’s Casino in Reno at 7:45 in the morning — supposedly. Clearly, it is the fastest ground way to return to the City. It was January 2, the day of the Rose and Fiesta Bowls, games I wanted to see. Plenty of time. In the line in front … Read more
Editor’s note: Pope John Paul II prepared the following reflection for a Vatican conference to commemorate the tricentennial of the publication of Newton’s Principia. Is the Community of world religions, including the Church, ready to enter into a more thorough-going dialogue with the scientific community, a dialogue in which the integrity of both religion and … Read more
In the Responsory for the Office of the Third Friday of Advent, we read: “For if one hopes, even though his tongue is still, he is still singing always in his heart. But the man who has no hope, no matter what clamors and shouts he makes to be heard by men, is speechless in … Read more
This year Georgetown University celebrates the two-hundredth anniversary of its founding by Bishop John Carroll. It is the oldest university in this country with Catholic origins. Interestingly, the University of Bologna in Italy, the oldest university in the world, the Alma Mater Studiorum, is currently celebrating its 900th Anniversary. Throughout medieval and modern times, Bologna … Read more
On December 23, 1923, Isak Dinesen, from her farm in Ngong in present-day Kenya, wrote to her mother in Denmark: I wish I could smell the Christmas tree and the indescribably delicious aroma of roast goose out here; it is quite right… that “the nose is the memory,”—but I am sure that you will all … Read more
Not often in history has a single event had the multifold and far reaching effect upon a whole civilization and, more poignantly, Western consciousness than the Great War. Prior to 1914, from at least the eighteenth century, in the West one of history’s great calms reigned, a calm made up of rationality, civility, of respect … Read more
James Boswell reached Motiers, Switzerland on December 14, 1764. He had climbed on horseback over a peak he called the “Mountain Lapidosa”—the “Rocky Mountain,” probably Mount Chasseron—but almost the first thing he did was to “alight” at the door of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Boswell was twenty-four and wanted to “use his time well.” By some fast … Read more
In the recent film “Wedding in Galilee,” two traditional Muslim couples were shown together praying, while the camera zeroed in on some beads sliding along a wire with their chant. In his essay “Worship in the Parish Communities” (Feast of Faith, Ignatius, 1986), Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger mentioned the importance of not making Mass our only … Read more
Not too long ago, I received a letter from my friend Robert Reilly, who had recently switched from the U.S. Consulate in Berne to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Bryn Mawr. Thanks to Anne Burleigh, I had been on a binge of reading Jane Austen, which I had mentioned to Reilly. “I am glad to … Read more
My cousin Kathleen and her husband Chuck Oldsen were in Washington from San Diego for about a week this spring. One Sunday, we drove over to Gettysburg, a place I had not seen for almost thirty years, when I went with the late Father Dick Spillane. In many ways, Gettysburg remains the most powerful of … Read more
As Ronald Reagan comes to the end of his presidency, we can acknowledge that he has been almost the only public figure of his rank consistently to oppose abortion as a civil policy, with the intention of doing something about it. That he was not able to do more is almost exclusively due to the … Read more
The subject of this reflection is not why people do not go to Mass. Nor is it about Protestant churches or Jewish synagogues. Rather, it is about the myriads of churches that exist in the Catholic world. What are they “for”? Well, no doubt, they are places in which are held the Sacraments, those rites … Read more
In February, I was invited by my colleague, Professor Jan Karski, to attend a performance at the Kennedy Center of the Washington Dance Society. Professor Karski’s wife, Pola Nirenska, is a well-known director of modern dance. The final dance of the evening, set to some music by Ernest Bloch, was entitled “Dirge, 1981,” based on … Read more
What causes war and what causes fightings among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war. The Epistle of St. James (4:1-2) The great enthusiasm for the flurry of … Read more
James Boswell was in Wittenberg, in Saxony, on 0 30 September 1764, on his “Grand Tour” in Germany and Switzerland. He visited there the tombs of Luther and Melanchthon. The convent which housed the remains of these famous Protestant divines had, unfortunately, been “miserably shattered by the bombardments,” but the tombs were still intact. Boswell … Read more
Arguments over nuclear weapons and strategy often use the conceit of a “scenario” — an imaginary congeries of circumstances — to test out hypotheses, weigh alternative policies, and draw prescriptive conclusions. Consider this scenario: A book addresses the morality of deterrence. The book’s authors are Catholic scholars specializing in constitutional law, philosophical ethics, and theological … Read more