In ‘Renewing Theology,’ J. Matthew Ashley argues that when brought into dynamic relation with spirituality (and vice versa), the work of theology is deeply relevant to our lives and is vital at every level of following Christ. It becomes part and parcel of a “way of life”—the life of faith.
Books
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Review: St. Katharine Drexel’s complicated record on race
In ‘Katherine Drexel and the Sisters Who Shared Her Vision,’ the historian Margaret McGuinness has performed another valuable service to American Catholic history.
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In ‘Doppelganger,’ Naomi Klein investigates her twin and uncovers a shadow world
Naomi Klein’s new book serves as a kind of sociopolitical post-mortem of the Covid era, in which our social divisions and paranoias only grew more strident. It is also tragically timely.
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Review: Peter Brown’s memoir details a life of joyful scholarship
Peter Brown’s ‘Journeys of the Mind’ presents a very attractive picture of one man’s life immersed in the world of books and arguments—one that also seems like a lot of fun.
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Review: Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s books continue to cast a spell over readers.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s novels ‘Silver Nitrate’ and ‘Mexican Gothic’ feature complicated heroines, compelling plots and supernatural elements solidly grounded in research.
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Contemplating eternity: Bishop Gumbleton’s life of witness
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton appears in ‘No Guilty Bystander’ to be an institutional “lifer,” resolved to remain part of a gradually evolving system but reserving the right to dissent when he sees fit.
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Review: Alice McDermott belongs among the great Catholic novelists.
The good news for anyone whose literary tastes have been strongly influenced by the Catholic novels of Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Francois Mauriac, Georges Bernanos and more is this: The new Alice McDermott novel, ‘Absolution,’ has arrived.
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Fiction as a business—with a Catholic subtext
‘Big Fiction’ is a book full of cogent analysis, ambitious argument, juicy quotes from insiders and a demonstration of the central role of Catholics in American publishing.
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Review: The story of Thomas Merton’s forgotten brother
‘Remembering the Forgotten Merton’ is a brief biography of Thomas Merton’s brother John Paul, whom Merton fans know primarily through the powerful elegy that Merton composed to mark his brother’s death as a fighter pilot in the Second World War.
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Review: Contemplating death, eschatology and eternity
John E. Thiel of Fairfield University ventures to propose a “thick” eschatology based on the idea of a continuation of the human response to grace into an afterlife in ‘Now and Forever: A Theological Aesthetics of Time.’