To Notre Dame fans as well as to a certain portion of the American Catholic populace, Knute Rockne remains a mythic figure—the founding father of the legend of the Fighting Irish.
Catholic Book Club
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‘Gaudium et Spes’ and the optimistic final days of Vatican II
Vatican II closed 60 years ago this week. One of its final documents, “Gaudium et Spes,” has also proved to be perhaps its most influential.
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What William Kennedy’s writing did for his hometown of Albany
William Kennedy did for his hometown what Joyce did for Dublin, what Bellow did for Chicago, what Faulkner did for his fictional Yoknapatawpha County. He became the bard of a particular time and place and, through it, continues to explore universal themes.
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‘Lumen Gentium’: The master work of Vatican II
Some of the most resonant and memorable phrases of Vatican II come from “Lumen Gentium,” including the description of the church as the people of God.
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‘Dei Verbum’ at 60: the Vatican II doc that revolutionized how Catholics read the Bible
“Dei Verbum” doesn’t usually get the press of the more famous documents of Vatican II, but it had a profound effect on the way Catholics studied, interpreted and read the Bible.
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Michael Harrington, the ‘pious apostate’ who championed socialism in America
Michael Harrington was America’s much-needed conscience on issues of poverty in the 1960s and later.
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Remembering Phyllis Trible, who challenged our image of God as male or female
“The God of scripture is beyond sexuality, neither male nor female, nor a combination of the two,” the renowned scholar Phyllis Trible said in a 1989 interview.
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An editor’s editor: Walter Abbott, S.J., and the documents of Vatican II
Though ‘The Documents of Vatican II’ remains Walter Abbott’s signature achievement in the eyes of many Catholics, the publication was just one moment in a lifetime of notable work on behalf of the church and the world in fields ranging from Scripture, ecumenism, racial justice and spirituality.
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An ongoing reckoning with anti-Semitism: 60 years since ‘Nostra Aetate’
60 years ago next week, “Nostra Aetate” was promulgated, marking a definitive change in the church’s approach toward the Jewish people and its own history.
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The patron saint of undergraduate philosophers: Frederick Copleston
The books of Frederick Copleston, S.J., continue to grace the bookshelves of philosophers, seminarians, college students and many others as an invaluable resource of clear-headed, insightful explication of the entire history of Western philosophy.