Is hell empty? Pope Francis hopes so. Among the thinkers of the past century who speculated it could be so was Hans Urs von Balthasar, a favorite of the past two popes and a prominent theologian of his time.
Literature
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Movie Club
Catholic Movie Club: In Jane Austen’s ‘Emma,’ change isn’t up to us alone. It’s up to God, too.
If we really resolve to change for the better as Emma does, we can count on some grace to help us along.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: A meditation on faith
In his 2008 book, Tomáš Halík calls on the church to provide “dressing stations” for the wounded. Halík’s book is now available for the first time in an English translation by Gerald Turner as ‘Touch the Wounds: On Suffering, Trust, and Transformation.’
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: The examined life in the eternal city
Like much of Liam Callanan’s fiction, ‘When in Rome’ hints at the action of divine grace in people’s lives and how the protagonists come to understand and appreciate its beneficence.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Jill Lepore’s reasons to panic (or not)
In ‘The Deadline,’ Jill Lepore uses her deep historical knowledge to ground the reader in truthful analysis, synthesizing complex ideas into their most digestible form.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Abdulrazak Gurnah on war, chance encounters and destiny
Abdulrazak Gurnah won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature for ‘Afterlives,’ which was not published in the United States until 2022.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Evaluating our militant empire
In ‘War Made Invisible,’ Norman Solomon examines the variety of ways we are so often uninformed or misinformed by our mass media’s coverage (and non-coverage) of wars and their legacy of destruction.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Walter Brueggemann on what the Bible really says about our political culture
In ‘Ancient Echoes,’ the highly respected Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann provides a provocative set of essays that provides a useful treasury of biblical texts potentially relevant to contemporary political discussion.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
C. S. Lewis wasn’t a writer of fantasy. He was a teller of hard truths.
C. S. Lewis was gifted with an expansive imagination—but much of his spiritual writing doesn’t flinch from the hard realities of life.
Posted inArts & Culture, Interviews
The Odyssey’s first woman translator on war, religion and why Homer still matters
An interview with Emily Wilson discusses the importance of the ‘Iliad’ to both young and old readers, its relationship with faith and what lessons we can glean about essential human nature from such an ancient text.