Why Does Everything Come in Threes: A Short Book About Everything Peter Kreeft (Ignatius, $22, 146 pages) Peter Kreeft, a modern-day G.K. Chesterton, has a delightful meditation on the persistence of important things coming in threes, modeled on the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Trinity, asserts Kreeft “is the most practical thing in the world,” the First Cause, the [...]
Lost in the Chaos: Immanence, Despair, Hope: R.J. Snell (Angelico Press, $28 pb, 182 pages) R.J. Snell, editor-in-chief of The Public Discourse and director of academic programs at the Witherspoon Institute at Princeton, has written an important short brief against modern malaise, the false idylls that promise but fail to address that malaise, and the recovery of hope to escape the malaise. [...]
Fulton Sheen (Cluny, US$20, 233 pages) In 1940, Bishop Fulton Sheen, wrote Freedom Under God, a meditation on the extremisms of liberalism and totalitarianism that idolized the individual and society respectively with no appreciation of the interdependency of the individual and society. Both extremes were guilty of making “redemption and brotherly love” irrelevant, although in different ways. Christianity, Bishop Sheen, the popular [...]
Antoine Campagnon, translated by Catherine Porter (Belknap Press, $29.95, 168 pages) A Summer with Pascal is a light, breezy introduction by Antoine Campagnon to one of the most important Christian apologists, Blaise Pascal. Campagnon, who has written about other French writers (Montaigne, Proust) turns his eye to the 17th century writer who famously gave us Pascal’s Wager, which posits that it is [...]
By J.M. Glover: Dermot Kearney: Pro-life hero Dr. Dermot Kearney, a British Catholic cardiologist who spoke at the National March for Life in May, has been honoured for his work on the medical abortion pill reversal (APR). (See The Interim, June 2024.) In April, he received the Anton Neuwirth Prize for the Protection of Life Award in Slovakia “for providing medical care [...]
The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power and People Paul Seabright (Princeton University Press, $44, 485 pages) Paul Seabright, an economist at the Toulouse School of Economics, ambitiously applies not only economics but anthropology, history, philosophy, political science, psychology, science, and sociology, to understand how the world’s religions, which he calls platforms -- “structures that bring individuals together in mutually [...]
Oswald Clark: During a campaign stop in Tampa, Florida, highlighting the president’s unwavering support for unrestricted abortion, Joe Biden made the sign of the cross as Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikki Fried spoke lambasting Governor Ron DeSantis for signing a law that bans abortion after six weeks. It was widely taken as a sign of opposition to the state’s abortion restrictions. CatholicVote [...]
Paul Tuns: Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker is a conservative, Latin Mass Catholic, who was asked to deliver the commencement address at this year’s graduating ceremonies at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. His speech raised the ire of feminists and liberal Catholics. On May 11, Butker, who has won three Super Bowls in the last five seasons, told the graduating class, [...]
Rory Leishman: Direct attacks on the God-given, natural right of everyone to freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression are continuing to mount, not just in Canada, but also in Europe. One of the most prominent, recent victims is J.K. Rowling, a resident of Edinburgh Scotland and author of the Harry Potter series of novels. Siobhian Brown, Scotland’s Minister for Victims and [...]
Paul Tuns: On May 9, Albertos Polizogopoulos, a Canadian pro-life lawyer, died at the age of 41 following a three-year battle with cancer. Polizogopoulos had a career that defended life, conscience, and religious freedom, with his official obituary noting, “He defended the rights of the vulnerable and the freedoms of Christians." Polizogopoulos appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada ten times and [...]
John Carpay: Bill C-63 (Online Harms Act) is the most serious threat to free speech in Canada in generations. If passed into law by Parliament, Bill C-63 would give the Canadian Human Rights Commission new powers to prosecute and punish non-criminal speech if deemed to be “hateful” in the subjective opinion of federal bureaucrats. Canadians found guilty would be required to pay [...]
Rory Leishman: Faithful Canadians who look to Sacred Scripture as the ultimate authority on all matters of faith and morality should beware: They could soon end up in jail as a prisoner of conscience for upholding their honest Christian beliefs. That is the fate now threatening Paivi Rasanen in Finland. She is a prominent medical doctor and long-standing member of the Finnish [...]
All the Kingdoms of the World: On Radical Religious Alternatives to Liberalism by Kevin Vallier (Oxford, $36, 305 pages) Version 1.0.0 Kevin Vallier has set out to reply to the integralist challenge to liberalism in his important 2023 volume, All the Kingdoms of the World. Vallier takes a dozen pages to define integralism but if it can be summarized in [...]
Paul Tuns, Review: Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (And the Truth About Residential Schools) edited by C.P. Champion and Tom Flanagan with foreword by Conrad Black (True North and Dorchester Books, $21.99 343 pages) In May 2021, the news broke that the remains of 221 missing children were discovered in an unmarked, mass grave in an apple orchard at a residential [...]
Paul Tuns: On April 8, the Vatican released a document affirming the dignity of every individual, condemning abortion, euthanasia, surrogacy, human trafficking and transgenderism, as well as poverty, violence, war, sexual abuse, and poor treatment of migrants and prisoners. The document, Dignitas infinita, was released by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) and written by Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, [...]