Review: Thomas More, God’s good servant
Joanne Paul wrote her powerful and considerable biography of Thomas More because she finds More’s life relevant to today’s world. But the book also addresses another question: Was More a saintly martyr or a vicious murderer?
Review: Seeking a healthy planet and a healthy church
In Christina Rivera’s new collection, we wander through waves of connections, an ebb and flow carrying us between climate change, the sixth extinction, motherhood, all kinds of oceans and personal challenges—including the writer’s desire to leave the Catholic Church she was raised in.
Review: A Jesuit high school whodunit
Anna Bruno’s ‘Fine Young People,’ set at St. Ignatius, an elite Jesuit high school in a Pittsburgh suburb, operates as a whodunit on multiple levels simultaneously.
Review: Parables of a Greenland priest
Henrik Pontoppidan’s ‘The White Bear’ gives us two novellas that work in conversation with each other. Both feature burly, uncouth protagonists who endure episodes of childhood trauma and develop a fiercely independent way of engaging with the world.
Review: Molly McNett and making the unsayable sayable
Molly McNett’s ‘Child of These Tears’ displays the difficulties of translation, the irreducibility of meaning, and the frustrating limitations of human nature and society.
Review: Bennett Cerf, Random House co-founder and superstar editor
Gayle Feldman’s new biography of Bennett Cerf, ‘Nothing Random,’ is a window into the past of American literary culture.
To understand Christian hospitality, look to the host
For the Christian, the matter of hospitality would seem to be straightforward, a given. But lately, the word hospitality sums up the challenge of discipleship.
Measuring Pope Francis’ legacy one year after his death
Among all the news articles I have read in the past couple of years, I am not ungrateful that one poignant, below-the-fold story has remained with me, a glow-in-the-dark star stuck to a ceiling. When Pope Francis visited Indonesia in September 2024, The New York Times reported about a group of transgender women in South Jakarta enthusiastically preparing to attend the papal Mass at the Bung Karno Stadium in Jakarta. The reporter, Emma Bubola, described them donning feathers, glitter and rosaries. One of the women explained, “Pope Francis deserves our best outfit.” The subhead of the article put it succinctly:…
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