As our own cultural moment in the United States has included some prominent conversions to Catholicism, what might we learn from some of the more prominent converts in British Catholic history?
Books
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
L.A. and the sacred dream of suburbia, captured by D. J. Waldie
D. J. Waldie’s strikingly beautiful book in 1996 about what it was like to grow up in Lakewood, Calif., “Holy Land,” is one of many writings by this chronicler of Los Angeles’s past and future.
Posted inFaith, News
Pope Francis acknowledges mistakes and defends most controversial decisions in new autobiography
In several chapters of his new book “Hope: The Autobiography,” Pope Francis directly addresses readers, looking back on his pontificate and urging all to keep the hope.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Remembering David Lodge, the ‘agnostic Catholic’ who captured the post-Vatican II zeitgeist
David Lodge’s novels—as well as his many works of nonfiction—made him an important figure in 20th-century British literature. He also captured well the angst of many lay Catholics in the aftermath of Vatican II.
Posted inArts & Culture, Film
A Bob Dylan nerd reviews ‘A Complete Unknown’
As a young Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown,” Timothee Chalamet captures some of the iconic singer’s enigmatic yet magnetic personality.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
A guide for Christmas reading—highlighting the Dickensian fiction of Oscar Hijuelos
Oscar Hijuelos’s ‘Mr. Ives’ Christmas’ doesn’t start out as a cheery story—but in the end, this parable of good will lost and good will regained is a perfect Christmas tale.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Two things can be true: Catholicism and feminism
Can you be a Catholic and a feminist? Julie Hanlon Rubio gives her answer in the introduction of her new book—in the form of a confident “yes.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Joyelle McSweeney mourns in verse
Joyelle McSweeney’s ‘Death Styles’—her 10th book across creative and critical genres—rewards our attention.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Frantz Fanon is having a moment
With his new biography, ‘The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon,’ Adam Shatz seeks to give us Fanon the person, and not just his most famous soundbites.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Eamon Duffy on Peter Ackroyd’s ‘The English Soul’
Peter Ackroyd declares at the outset of ‘The English Soul: Faith of a Nation’ that Christianity has been “the reflection, perhaps the embodiment of the English soul.” But his book is not about Christianity so much as it is about some notable figures in Protestant England.