It was impossible not to wince at Cardinal Dolan’s cozy gladhanding with that monstrous woman at the Al Smith Dinner. Leah Barkoukis, reporting for Town Hall, quoted our shepherd: I was very moved by the obvious attempt on behalf of both Sec. Clinton and Mr. Trump … to be courteous, get along, to say nice […]
Forgive me if I do not join the chorus calling for John Podesta’s resignation or—drum roll—a pro-forma apology from Hillary Clinton for derisive email comments by her staffers about Catholics. Hillary Clinton is corrupt to the marrow. She is guilty of actual crimes. But our shepherds avert their eyes from the squalor of Hillary Clinton’s […]
Books are the flesh of words. Not long ago I wrote that a material book will love you back, something an electronic book cannot do. Several literal-minded readers chided me, ever so gently, for making a romance out of ink on paper. The chiding was a challenge to hunt up testimony in support of my […]
I put aside the day’s news with one thought: the end times are always with us. We do not have to wait for their approach—not tomorrow, not next year, not some distant century. They abide with us. We are forever in them. And every morning we awaken one day closer to the solitary Apocalypse that […]
One thing everybody knows about Rome is that it fell. Just why it did is still debated. Classicists can count 200-plus reasons for the dissolution—or evolution—of what was once the known world’s superpower. Fall, however, is a sexier word. It goes well with caricatures of Neronian debauchery fondly promoted in 19th century moralizing paintings or […]
James Agee was a fierce critic. His movie reviews for Time and The Nation, written in the 1940s and early ‘50s, are among the best—no, they are the best—in the annals of American film criticism. W.H. Auden admitted to reading his reviews to spare himself having to go to the movies. Agee did not squander […]
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