‘A Ministry of Risk,’ a collection of the writings and speeches of the late Phil Berrigan (1923-2002), is a provocative anthology destined to leave most readers bewildered, challenged and perhaps even a little angry.
Literature
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: André Aciman’s formative year in Rome
The novelist and memoirist André Aciman chronicles his formative year in Rome as a teenager in ‘Roman Year.’
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: ISIS killed her son. She met them face to face.
‘American Mother,’ Diane Foley’s and Colum McCann’s story of Foley’s life and that of her son, James Foley, is written with a mother’s love, her eventual understanding of hostage situations and her desire for others to understand the struggle she faced.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Father James Martin on three books about death and mortality
I was delighted recently to discover that three of my favorite authors, all from extremely different backgrounds and perspectives, have written three extremely different books on aging. Yet even with their differences, they agree on the big points.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
R.I.P. John Coleman, S.J., distinguished sociologist (and parish priest)
One of the nation’s most distinguished sociologists for many years and an expert on the relationship between religion and public life, the Rev. John A. Coleman died on Jan. 17, 2025 in Los Gatos, Calif., at the age of 87.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Octavia Butler: A Black science fiction writer who predicted today’s dire headlines
Octavia Butler, the Black science fiction writer who died in 2006, did not just create imaginary worlds with parallels to ours. Sometimes she created worlds that are eerily a little too much like our own.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Michael Longley’s poetry perfectly blends Irish political and pastoral themes
Michael Longley, the Irish poet whose long career included more than 40 books, died last week. He was lauded by literary, social and political figures alike for his many contributions to Irish literature and to the cause of social reconciliation.
Posted inArts & Culture, Podcasts
The greatest Catholic writers you (probably) haven’t heard of
This week’s episode of “Jesuitical” features a conversation with James T. Keane, whose new book ‘Reading Culture Through Catholic Eyes,’ explores 50 Catholic writers, thinkers and “firebrands” who have influenced Catholic culture.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Josephine Ward was one of British Catholicism’s leading lights—and a prolific novelist.
Josephine Ward was a strong critic of Catholic modernism, and many of her novels featured protagonists struggling to reconcile au courant political and religious ideas with the strictures of the Catholic Church.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Doris Kearns Goodwin looks back on the ’60s—and the love of her life
Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s” centers on the unique history found by going through her and her husband Dick Goodwin’s boxes of writings and memorabilia from his five-decade career in American politics.