In “All the Kingdoms of the World¸” Kevin Vallier engages with Catholic integralists, but he opens a bigger question: Is there such a thing as a Catholic politics?
Arts & Culture
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Mary Beard on Roman imperial power
An account of “what it meant to be a Roman emperor,” Mary Beard’s new book is also a sustained exploration of tradition embodied by an individual ruler.
Posted inArts & Culture, Poetry
2024 Foley Poetry Prize: The Patron Saint of Sliding Glass Doors
If we could see the invisible saints
watching over houses, whether imagined
or not
Posted inArts & Culture, Poetry
The 2024 Foley poetry contest: art that pierces and disrupts
Poems like these at the very least deserve more eyes on them, and we are more than happy to make that happen.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
How Graham Greene’s ‘Brighton Rock’ helped me become Catholic
‘Brighton Rock’ made me feel ready to become a Catholic after so many years of deliberately not being one. I, too, frequently felt lost and agnostic. The story of Rose and Pinkie—so similar, so different, both human—was like a piece I found that had been missing from my puzzle.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
E. B. White is one of the most famous children’s book authors. But he should be better known for his essays.
I was well into adulthood before I realized the co-author of my battered copy of The Elements of Style was also the author of Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
A tribute to Alice Munro, true master of the short story
This review by Andre Dubus III of Alice Munro’s short story collection ‘Open Secrets’ was originally published in America magazine in 1995. Ms. Munro, a Nobel Laureate and acclaimed author, died on May 13, 2024, at 92.
Posted inArts & Culture, News
Jesuit scientist who bridged faith and science recounted in new PBS documentary
It is not surprising that Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, an eminent paleontologist, got himself in trouble with church officials and his Jesuit superiors.
Posted inArts & Culture, Television
PBS’s ‘Dante’ introduces the divine poet—and neglects his Catholic faith
Ric Burns’s splendid two-part PBS documentary, “Dante: Inferno to Paradise,” has brought Dante’s achievement beyond the groves of academe and into America’s living rooms.
Posted inArts & Culture, Music
Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ embraces country music, Black history and religious imagery
With “Cowboy Carter,” her eighth studio album, Beyoncé not only explores the longed-for and carelessly and/or intentionally erased Black past in country music, but also moves the genre forward into a hopefully more expansive future.