Category: Book Reviews

If someone we trust suggests a good book for us to read, we are more inclined to do so. On the other hand, if someone we trust tells us not to bother reading this or that book, we usually heed their advice. Book reviews provide that service. The reviewers that contribute to our website are excellent critics. So far, all of our book reviews, except one, have been commendatory. Brian Kelly’s review of Deepak Chopra’s The Third Jesus was condemnatory.

Positive book reviews that appear in good Catholic media outlets would not be there if the books were not of great value. Earnest reviewers would not bother to push mediocrity. Their mission is to whet the appetites of potential readers. They want to share their own enthusiasm for another’s written work in order to benefit the readers of their own columns. It is actually an act of charity. A potential reader has to be motivated. As G.K. Chesterton pointed out: “There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read.”

Why Human Rights Are Wrong

Modernity offers many substitutes for God and for the Christian religion that was the sole foundation of Western civilization and culture for most of two millennia. Some of these substitutes aren’t what they used to be. For instance, racism, according … Continue reading

Glittering Images

My tongue is not entirely in cheek when I say I have never been able to make up my mind about best-selling art critic and social commentator Camille Paglia. Is she really the bisexual leftwing atheist she professes herself to … Continue reading

Liberty, the God That Failed

Review of Liberty, the God That Failed: Policing the Sacred and Constructing the Myths of the Secular State, from Locke to Obama (Angelico Press, 2012) In his first encyclical, Inscrutabili (On the Evils Affecting Modern Society), April 21, 1878, Pope … Continue reading

Anti-Christ Word Games

John Rao Black Legends and the Light of the World (Forest Lake, MN, Remnant Press, 2011) ISBN: 1-890740-17-9 Dr. John C. Rao, D. Phil., Oxford, is Associate Professor of History at St. John’s University and director of the Roman Forum. … Continue reading