Roger Haight’s latest book is a master class in Christian apologetics. Haight’s study rises from pointed questions put to the believer, questions that cannot be ignored or wished away.
Literature
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
A Catholic guide to Halloween reading
From Edgar Allan Poe to Dean Koontz to Flannery O’Connor, America’s editors and contributors are not (always) afraid of some horror.
Posted inArts & Culture, Podcasts
How the Catholic imagination can save the lost art of reading
This week on “The Gloria Purvis Podcast,” Gloria speaks with Professor Jessica Hooten Wilson about the Catholic imagination—exploring writers like Toni Morrison and the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
The spiritual depths of Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison’s fiction conveyed much of the pain, sacrifice and trauma that exemplifies so much of the African-American experience—which is why it makes some white readers uncomfortable.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Jane Austen’s greatest lesson? Becoming the person God created you to be
Jane Austen’s literary genius lies in the fact that she crafts stories that impart the most pressing of human concerns in what seem at first the most mundane of experiences. It makes her a valuable guide to life.
Posted inArts & Culture, Ideas
Kurt Vonnegut would still be amused.
The absolute refusal to accept handed-down truths—whether in politics, science, religion or art—was a constant in Kurt Vonnegut’s life and work.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Predicting (and preventing) the next civil war
Barbara F. Walter offers a handy guide for predicting where political instability is most likely to occur—and it is usually when that country is moving away from democracy.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
30 years ago, Sinéad O’Connor ripped up a photo of JPII on stage. What should Catholics make of her protest today?
Sinéad O’Connor’s provocative appearance on ‘Saturday Night Live’ 30 years ago drew cries of outrage. But was some of her anger justified?
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Two scholars on Covid, mortality and the meaning of friendship
While a new book of letters between Jack Miles and Mark C. Taylor uses the early months of the pandemic as the background and occasion for their letters, the friendship they display is vastly more interesting.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Yes, J. F. Powers wrote about priests. But his real subject was America.
Powers’s chosen subjects—in cassocks or nay—are inevitably All-American, and his stories are careful studies of American mid-century life and ambition.