It has been one year since Pope Benedict XVI’s ill-starred Regensburg Address. We say “ill-starred” because the media fixated on a side comment the pope made about Islam, apparently to clinch a depiction of the pope as intolerant. In the process, they obscured the luminous center of the pope’s speech, the relationship of science and … Read more
Historians have much reason to be grateful to the memorialists of the 17th and 18th centuries. Given that Antonia Fraser has made “love and Louis XIV” the subject of her latest work, she is certainly indebted to the Princess Elizabeth Charlotte (Liselotte) of Bavaria, sister-in-law of the Sun King, whom Fraser calls her favorite among … Read more
A round of ritual lamentations on the demise of the classical music recording industry has ushered in yet another bountiful fall harvest of CDs. In fact, according to Newsweek, while overall music sales declined by 5 percent last year, classical music sales grew by 22 percent. A large part of that astonishing figure apparently has … Read more
"Je suis l’Armée Britannique!" declared Sir Hugh Dacre Barrett-Lennard (1917-2007) to a startled French mayor at the Normandy invasion when he arrived with driver and jeep far behind enemy lines, in the 2nd Batallion, Essex Regiment. His title only came with accession to the baronetcy when he was 60 years old, as the result … Read more
Notorious atheists like Christopher Hitchens try to convince us that the world would be a more humane place if we could give up on the idea of God, but Tod Lindberg provides a cogent argument in The Political Teachings of Jesus that the modern world’s most cherished liberal values — religious tolerance, equality, freedom, and … Read more
The recent partial-birth abortion case, in which the Supreme Court upheld certain restrictions passed by a state legislature, generated what has become the usual — and uncontroversial — anti-Catholic venting by the nation’s chattering classes. Commentators huffed that the majority in the case was composed of Catholics who, it was whispered, may have acted on … Read more
Anthony Esolen’s Ironies of Faith is a very dated kind of book. There is nothing of the first-person narrative that adorns modern books, where the author tells us why something matters to him. Ironies of Faith: The Laughter at the Heart of Christian Literature Anthony Esolen, ISI Books, 412 pages, $18 Anthony Esolen’s … Read more
Ramesh Ponnuru, an honoree at the Morley Institute’s 25th Anniversary Partnership Dinner, offered remarks at the event on his search for truth and the defense of life. * * * It is generous of you to recognize me since I have been a Catholic in public life for such a short period of time. My … Read more
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything Christopher Hitchens, Twelve Books, 307 pages, $24.99 One is tempted to quip that Christopher Hitchens is certainly one of the best minds of the 18th century, but that would be to give Hitchens too much credit as an equal to Voltaire in wit. He is not, and … Read more
Two years ago, the mainstream media gathered in a special conclave in Rome to discuss the disastrous election to the papacy of Ratzinger the Enforcer, God’s Rottweiler, the hardliner, inflexible, rigid, etc., blah blah. Some of us suggested to our television screens that the talking heads might want to wait more than a few seconds … Read more
“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” We hear this bracing sentiment often enough in musical and liturgical settings, most notably in the seraphic motet by Tomás Luis de Victoria, or in the spare sequence of chant. When it is conveyed to us under these modalities, … Read more
These days of Inside Catholic’s nascence find us debating the merits of political parties and ideologies in light of both Catholic teaching and historical tradition. Which party, which corresponding set of philosophies, is the one to which good Catholics ought to hitch their wagon? Does such a party even exist? I don’t want to give … Read more
This is the first time since 2001 that 9/11 has snuck up on me unannounced. For the past five years, the anniversary has been preceded by a sinking feeling in my stomach that wouldn’t leave until 9/12. And then, of course, there is the usual media rush to wring every last ounce of pathos from … Read more
It has been said that while writing the Summa, Saint Thomas Aquinas was, among other things, engaging in a dialogue with Saint Augustine across the centuries. In his extraordinary Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI also seems to regard, in his mind’s eye, a number of interlocutors, living and dead. It has … Read more
We all awakened this morning to the news that the greatest voice of our generation, Luciano Pavarotti, had died. The sound of his voice is something that I have carried inside my head since my early 20s, when I first heard him sing La Boheme at the Metropolitan Opera. I heard him sing … Read more
Trinket shops at roadside tourist spots used to sell items like shellacked coasters cut from cross sections of white pine or birch logs, or faux-bark mottoes inscribed with uplifting sentiments, or bawdy farmyard postcards. That sort of thing. Perhaps they still do. Among the trinkets, one could always find the three monkeys telling … Read more
I do not own a computer printer. My computer is itself a small laptop, which would be too easily dwarfed by such a thing. Worse, if I did have a printer, I would be tempted to use it, and I would soon find that I needed an extra filing cabinet, then a bank of cabinets, … Read more
I recently saw the movie Copying Beethoven. There are very few good films about composers. This is not one of them, although it has the compensation of its "electrifying music," as advertised by the quote from the Seattle Times review on the DVD jacket cover, as if the music had been written for the … Read more
Alexis de Tocqueville was born—and died—a Catholic. He lost his faith as an adolescent, but it had already broadened and enlightened him (indeed, his childhood tutor was a beloved priest) and made him the brilliant political observer he would become. Tocqueville was an aristocrat from a family that had stood by the Bourbons and … Read more
To be perfectly frank, Victor J. Stenger is not on the first string of the atheist team. His writing is lackluster, his reasoning is often quite shallow, and he regularly dismisses the most complex points with a self-congratulatory wave. He knows a lot about science (and well he should, since he is emeritus professor of … Read more