Elizabeth Seton—who overcame innumerable obstacles to pursue her vocation—was the first native-born citizen of the United States to be named a saint.
Books
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How to read virtuously: Fall Literary Review
With this Fall Books literary issue, we offer writers and texts that we certainly feel are best read closely and conscientiously.
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Is your job necessary?
Americans work an awful lot. But what are we doing at the jobs we believe are so important?
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Review: An accurate look at Muslim beliefs
Two timely texts can help elevate our thinking and improve the ways we relate to our Muslim brothers and sisters.
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A spiritual reading of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’
T.S. Eliot attracts and repels all at once—but reading his ‘Four Quartets’ has been a formative experience for many a spiritual seeker.
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Graham Greene’s ‘The Quiet American’ argues that to write is to be political
At a moment when reporters are being criticized from all sides, ‘The Quiet American’ feels painfully prescient.
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Review: Finding a Native American Identity in Oakland
In Tommy Orange’s debut novel, Oakland becomes a character as much as any of Orange’s other individuals: regularly erupting into violence, steadily erasing the history of its impoverished citizens who jump from apartment to apartment, existing in a series of “long, grey streets” that seem to go nowhere when you’re a kid on a bike pedaling around.
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Can Catholic literature build on its rich heritage?
A Catholic literary culture that works in continuity with its rich heritage will give us a contemporary literature that both gazes unflinchingly at the messiness of our present moment and artfully works out its characters’ salvation or damnation.
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The Catholic literary vision of Dean Koontz
Two questions arise: First, is Dean Koontz to be listed among serious novelists at all? Second, what makes him a Catholic novelist?
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Review: A passion for sleep
The narrator’s voice in Ottessa Moshfegh’s new novel is a subtle balance of crisp and curmudgeonly, indulging in dark comedy as a distancing, if not even a coping, mechanism.