In ‘Solidarity,’ Rowan Williams offers one imperative that reverberates through his book: If we are to recover a sustainable spirit of solidarity, we must work, both interpersonally and politically, to go beyond too-easy, sometimes performative declarations like “I feel for you and stand with you.”
Literature
Posted inCatholic Book Club
Annie Dillard: Our 20th-century Thoreau, nature writer and theologian
Annie Dillard on converting to Catholicism: “You go to a Catholic church, and there are people of all different colors and ages, and babies squalling. You’re taking a stand with these people. You’re saying: ‘Here I am. One of the people who love God.’”
Posted inBooks
Review: Memory-keepers, death and grief in ‘Brother Epistles’
We think of letters as a two-way form of communication: They go to and fro in the world, from one writer to the reader, who becomes the writer of the next letter. But sometimes we write letters that are not returned in a traditional way. In Brother Epistles: A Sister’s Memoir, Shanda McManus does just […]
Posted inBooks
Review: Rebecca Gayle Howell revisits the Book of Genesis
Rebecca Gayle Howell’s project in ‘Erase Gensis’ seems to exist in the tradition of midrash—the shaping of Scripture in light of contemporary concerns and creative interpretation.
Posted inBooks
Review: Life and taxes in Ray Madoff’s ‘The Second Estate’
How do taxation and democracy rely on and mutually support each other? In her new book ‘The Second Estate,’ Ray D. Madoff tackles this and other thorny questions around taxes and the way we pay them (or don’t).
Posted inIdeas
Sigrid Undset: Scholar, storyteller—and future saint?
Sigrid Undset’s writings were admired by everyone from Willa Cather to Dorothy Day. Her life is being studied by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. Who was this Norwegian teller of truths?
Posted inOf Many Things
Enough books to fill the entire world
Can we afford to stop reading when our sacred texts seem at times like the only thing we share?
Posted inShort Take
The three great loves of Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry fleshed out a picture of America in which people put down roots, commit themselves to each other and love the ground they stand on.
Posted inIdeas
Jesuits, Mohawks and Puritans meet in Molly McNett’s historical fiction
The deeply researched ‘Child of These Tears’ captures the profound humanness of Jesuit missionaries in colonial North America.
Posted inCatholic Book Club
Why you should study the classics but not kill anyone: Lessons from Donna Tartt’s fiction
Donna Tartt’s ‘The Secret History’ is an engrossing read. But is it also a powerful expression of our human efforts to understand eternal truths?