Because we are not free. Because we live under the tyranny of terror that sin uses to enslave us. We think that mercy will weaken us, destroy our position of strength.
Books
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
A Catholic Book Club milestone (and more)
The Catholic Book Club continues to flourish, approaching 2,000 members.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
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.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
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.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
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.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
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.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
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?
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
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.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: The feuding fathers of the Democratic Party
Both sons of New York, Alfred E. Smith and Franklin Roosevelt were close political allies. Until the national Democratic convention of 1932.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
James K. A. Smith’s Theological Journey
James K. A. Smith has spent much of his energy thinking about alternative communities and the politics of Jesus—about what role Christians should play in the American political project.