The Atlantic features a damning excerpt from David I. Kertzer’s forthcoming book on Pope Pius XII and his negotiations with Hitler. ‘Pius XII and Adolf Hitler had no affection for each other. Yet each man had his own reasons for initiating these talks. The pope placed the highest priority on reaching a deal with the… Continue reading Kertzer’s New Book on Pius XII and Hitler
Death was a catastrophe that no contemplation of the universe could soften. And, in explaining death as the punishment of Adam, Augustine gave the Christian laity of his time an explanation of death that was at least as melodramatic as death itself was shocking. Yet, in so doing, he caused the cosmos (that majestic and… Continue reading The Body and Society
In my recent review of Stephen Meyer’s book, Darwin’s Doubt, I closed with a quote from a letter that John Henry Newman wrote to one of his friends in 1870, summing up his problems with the Argument from Design. It’s a great quote, one that was first brought to my attention by Father Edward Oakes,… Continue reading Newman vs Paley
I have amused myself while writing this book by trying to identify which, if any, late antique or early medieval writers (that is, those whose personality we can recapture, at any rate in part, with least mediation) I could imagine meeting with any real pleasure. It comes down to remarkably few: Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Gregory… Continue reading Medieval Dinner Conversation
Hesiod and the ‘mythographers’ had developed the method to understand the stories of the gods, but we know of no one before Herodotos who had tried to gather memories and documents together on such a scale to tell a connected story about the past. It was a very brave undertaking: the Persian Wars had finished… Continue reading Book Notes
