I have been on pilgrimage this spring and traveled with boon companions I rsquo ve kept late nights with Dorothy Day toted Thomas Merton on the train chuckled with Flannery O rsquo Connor over her tales of kindred freaks and got lost with Walker Percy in the cosmos They rsquo ve come with me ac

Much as I admire his writing, I could not countenance Colm Toibin's Mary.

May is the month in which the church honors Mary by happy coincidence it is also the month when secular culture honors mothers According to the Bible Mary rsquo s role in salvation history is small but mighty Through the agency of the Holy Spirit she conceives the Messiah gives birth to Jesus

Anyone who has visited the Frick Museum in New York and entered the main parlor whose walls are hung with splendid portrait after splendid portrait has witnessed one of the wittiest curatorial acts in museum-dom On either side of the massive fireplace hang two portraits by Hans Holbein Looking l

The Catholic imagination of the Irish playwright Teresa Deevy

From poet Dana Gioia, powerful meditations on loss and the redemptive power of beauty

Marilynne Robinson's new book of essays offers a rare combination of wisdom and beauty.

Thomas Lynch's The Sin-Eater breathes life into a figure from ancient folk magic.

T.C. Boyle's new novel takes on the disastrous effects of human encroachment upon the natural world