In ‘Requiem,’ her fifth book, Virginia Konchan takes the sacred seriously. She’s jocular with her subjects, including God, yet in doing so she demonstrates sustained attention toward the divine. God is among her natural poetic vocabulary.
Literature
Decline and fall? Christian Smith on the demise of traditional faith
In ‘Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America,’ Christian Smith argues that traditional institutional religion has lost its grasp on America—at least among Americans under the age of 50.
Review: The Catholic fragments of art, faith and sex in 1980s pop culture
Paul Elie’s ‘The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex and Controversy’ investigates pop culture’s crypto-religious, uncanny symbols of immanence and transcendence.
A relic of America magazine’s Jesuit patron, Edmund Campion
The patron saint of ‘America’ is Edmund Campion, S.J.—for several different reasons.
Walter Brueggemann: A scholar of the prophets—and a prophetic voice
Walter Brueggemann’s influence in the academy reached across denominations and traditions.
David Tracy was more than a theologian
The Rev. David Tracy, who died on April 29, was a monumental figure in American Catholicism, renowned as a teacher, scholar, writer and mentor to thousands of theologians.
Father sleuths best: Why priest-detectives make for good fiction
The genre of the crime-solving priest or religious might be a niche one, but it’s been around on the page and the screen for more than a century.
Review: The spiritual exercises of liberalism
In ‘Liberalism as a Way of Life,’ Alexandre Lefebvre argues that for secular people, liberalism, if practiced intentionally, can be the grace they are seeking in their ordinary lives.
Review: Recognizing our lives as pilgrimages
in ‘Finding God Along the Way,’ Christine Marie Eberle masterfully weaves together Scripture, poetry and Ignatian spirituality.
Review: Bridging the Catholic gap
In ‘Cultural Catholics,’ Maureen K. Day works to answer the question of who “cultural Catholics” really are—and how to connect with them.
