Vatican diplomacy has as its primary goal peace through dialogue, which runs counter to the complex dance of pressures and negotiations that nation-states use to jockey for power on the global stage.
Books
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Kellyanne Conway’s Catholic girlhood and my own
Mary Gordon finds that her childhood and that of former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway were strangely similar—and yet diverged in telling ways.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Defend or defund the police? It’s more complicated than that.
Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown law professor who has volunteered as a reserve officer for the Washington Metropolitan Police Department, takes us behind the scenes of urban policing in her new book.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and the Inklings: Telling Stories to Save Lives
As modern-day evangelists, C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien are simply unrivaled.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Next time you go to an art museum, bring Jed Perl’s latest book. It will be the ideal companion.
Must art always promote a particular idea or ideology? Jed Perl argues that “the artist in the act of creation must stand firm in the knowledge that art has its own laws and logic.”
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Review: Water is essential for life. Katy Carl’s debut novel reminds us that God is, too.
Katy Carl’s debut novel traces the slow growth of love between two people thirsting for something more out of life.
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Review: Motherhood and the impossibility of perfect work-life balance
Lara Bazelon’s ‘Ambitious Like a Mother’ raises (perhaps unintentionally) some interesting questions about gender, work, family and ambition—and how individual women (and men) who are blessed with options might want that four-way intersection to look.
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Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust: Reality or Revisionism?
A new book by David I. Kertzer argues that Pope Pius XII has more responsibility for the Holocaust than previously reported. But is the charge merited?
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The Jesuit influence in David Foster Wallace’s final, unfinished novel
David Foster Wallace’s novella ‘Something to Do With Paying Attention’ features two conversion narratives, a “fearful Jesuit” and “the death of childhood’s limitless possibility.”
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Review: What is a woman?
Kaya Oakes offers reflections on what it means to live as a woman today. This meaning grappling with growing older in a society and a church that both continue to prize feminine youth, fecundity and docility above all else.