Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Answering the Call

The Sulpician priest Gerald D Coleman is to be commended for this volume In it he shares with the Catholic community at large not only his long-term experiences as a rector professor and guide for seminary life but also his keen insights into the practical needs of priestly formation Catholic m

Posted inArts & Culture

Darth Mauled

Some see Halloween as a time for pretty outfits and make-believe—“My, what a handsome scarecrow” and the like. Personally, I always looked on the holiday as an occasion for casting ourselves headlong into our fears—of mortality, monsters and the dark—and laughing at the

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

The Lessons They Teach

When Michael Dirda took this summer off discerning readers of The Washington Post Book World were most likely disappointed They enjoy Dirda rsquo s erudite yet accessible reviews each Sunday The range of Dirda rsquo s interests and the breadth and depth of his literary knowledge are quite impress

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Guilty Bystander

The distinguished political scientist and historian Jan Gross nails the title of his book with one word fear This is not the first time In 2001 he did the same with Neighbors another one-word title dripping with irony because the book told the story of the July 1941 gruesome murder of the Jew

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

An Event to Experience

As the generation that fought World War II began to pass from the scene a proliferation of memoirs oral histories and similar works appeared with the aim of communicating to a generation that had not witnessed it the experience and importance of the event Something like that is happening now tha

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Sages of a Pivotal Age

Karen Armstrong rsquo s latest book covers arguably the most ambitious topic that she has yet attempted The scope is vast covering multiple continents cultures and chronologies Hundreds of years dozens of major figures and a landscape that stretches from Mount Olympus to the Great Wall of China

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Lost Connections

Charles D rsquo Ambrosio says that as a young man he turned to fiction in part as a Daedalian act of snobbery against aspects of his Jesuit education In an essay on J D Salinger published in 2001 D rsquo Ambrosio recounts how during his time at Seattle Prep reading Joyce and other modern write

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Somebody Wake Him Up

Talk about heroic labors To flesh out the tale of his quirky Irish-American theologian Fr Eddie Danaher George McCauley a New York Jesuit invents major chunks of history an imaginary religious order the Christian Fathers founded in the 16th century by a swashbuckling Portuguese explorer-tur

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Liberated by the Word

The North Atlantic captivity of the church is drawing to an end The center of Christian gravity is undeniably shifting southward This development is not a blip on the religious radar screen but a profound permutation Globally a major gravitational adjustment is occurring in the population density

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