For Chesterton, Christie and McInerny, a mystery story was the perfect device for showing how even dramatic sins, like murder, spring from the fallen condition that all human beings share.
Books
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The works of Brian Doyle remind us of the unique holiness of children and childhood
The writing of Brian Doyle, who died in 2017, hummed with an undercurrent that honors children and invites the reader to adopt their posture of innocence.
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Review: The British monarchy’s fraught (and sometimes bloody) history with Catholicism
A new study exploring the relationship between religion and the English monarchy by Catherine Pepinster explores the impact Elizabeth II and the monarchs that preceded her have had on the Church of England as well as on other faith traditions in their realm.
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Review: Wendell Berry on healing our divisions
In his new book, ‘The Need to Be Whole,’ Wendell Berry strives to give a glimpse of the undivided foundation that underpins all he has ever tried to think and say.
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‘Dirtbag, Massachusetts’: a former Catholic’s memoir about growing up in a turbulent home—and a broken church
Isaac Fitzgerald’s collection of essays Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional isn’t a Catholic memoir. Except when it is.
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Review: Do Catholic universities have a future?
The central concern of the Rev. James Heft in his new book is not only how “to preserve the continuity of the Catholic intellectual tradition, but also recognize how it might be adapted.”
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Review: The Sri Lankan civil war story told through poetry, humor and murder mystery
Shehan Karunatilaka’s new novel echoes elements of several all-time classics, including ‘The Divine Comedy,’ ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and almost everything by Kurt Vonnegut, whose voice and vision can be felt throughout.
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Review: The invitation to everyday holiness found in spiritual memoirs
In ‘Our Hearts Are Restless: The Art of Spiritual Memoir,’ Richard Lischer explores classics of “an intimate genre, perhaps the most intimate.”
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Molly Shannon, of SNL and ‘Superstar’ fame, is the Catholic school girl in all of us
More than the costumes and settings, it is that humanity at the heart of Molly Shannon’s comedy which makes it Catholic to the core.
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Review: The return of Cormac McCarthy
‘The Passenger’ and ‘Stella Maris,’ Cormac McCarthy’s elegiac, disputatious and deeply odd pair of new novels, offers a typically offbeat take on American culture and society.