Review of 1917: Red Banners, White Mantle by Warren H. Carroll (1981) Christendom Press. Every once in awhile a book will come into one’s hands that is impossible to put down, ends too soon, and begs to be read again … Continue reading
Category: Book Reviews
Seven Charming and Sweet Stories of Saint Luke
Review of Seven Stories for Christmas (e-book) by Henry von Blumenthal. Being a retired librarian of a “certain” age, I have resisted e-books because I love the feel of a real book in my hands. Here I reveal, however, that … Continue reading
‘And You Cannot Build Upon a Lie’
In 1920, ten years after Hilaire Belloc had stepped down from his four maturing years of publicly elected service in the House of Commons, he published a lucid book-length essay, entitled, The House of Commons and Monarchy. It is a … Continue reading
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
Father Karl Gereon Goldmann, SS, OFM
It is fascinating to contemplate the edifying life of Karl Gereon Goldmann, and to see so clearly the hand of God operating throughout it. Born in 1916, Karl was the third of seven sons of a devoutly Catholic German couple, … 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
The Who, What, Where, When, and Why of the Council
A book review, by Michael J. Miller, of The Second Vatican Council: An Unwritten Story, by Professor Roberto de Mattei, reprinted with kind permission of Loreto Publications. The famous black-and-white photograph of the Second Vatican Council in session, taken from a high balcony … 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
The Man Who Changed The Face of Europe
[Review of Richelieu, by Hilaire Belloc. Gates of Vienna Books, 2006.] Many years ago when I was in college, my history professors explained two theories of how and why a single man can change the course of history. Was the … Continue reading
For Sobran Lovers (I’m One)
There are still persons who will open a book and read instead of watching whatever’s on television or fiddling with an iPhone when they have leisure and whether or not the time is planned. (When they are truly devoted readers, … Continue reading
A Conversion Story for Our Time
Review of Young Tony and the Priest: Coming to Belief in an Age of Unbelief, by Gary Potter. Loreto Publications, 2012 This, my friend Gary Potter’s first foray into fiction, is a lovely story. Lovely in that it is filled … Continue reading
Catholic Heroism in the Face of Nazi Domination
A Review of When Hitler Took Austria, by Kurt von Schuschnigg. Ignatius Press, 2012 When I took up this book for my reading pleasure and to add to my store of historical knowledge, I expected it to be something a … 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
Book Review of ‘Church Militant: Bishop Kung and the Catholic Resistance in Communist Shanghai’
Thomas J. Craughwell for National Catholic Register: No China scholar wants to answer a knock on the door and find Chinese government officials standing at his doorstep. Yet, in 2006, that is what happened to Jesuit Father Paul Mariani. He … Continue reading
Gary Potter’s ‘In Reaction’: A Vision of Virtue
THE VISION OF VIRTUE 1 that informs In Reaction, the literary testament of a man who speaks the truth, is, essentially, the culture of sacramentality: the cultivation of grace upon our createdness; the intimate culture of the Incarnation. It is … Continue reading