Letters to the Editor: July-August 2025

One Disingenuous Argument After Another... Enemies of Normativity... Yooper Saint?... More to Be Said... What Phenomenon Enables Life?... For Your Guests

The News You May Have Missed: July-August 2025

Church’s Chicken Dance... Orthodox Turf War... Artificial Ingratiation... Just Your Ordinary, Everyday Weird Catholicism... and more

Three Critical Moments in the History of the Cosmos

THE SEEDS OF GOD

Edmund B. Miller

At certain junctions of time, life did come out of nowhere. Let us abandon the scientific term "spontaneous generation" and return to Augustine’s "rationes seminales."

Why Cormac McCarthy Stands Alone Among Novelists

THE EVENING ASPECT TO THE WEST

Will Hoyt

He saw the enduring presence of Christ — or, more exactly, Jesus and Mary — and the reliability of the promises implicit in the Incarnation, Passion, and Assumption.

Two Immediate Threats to Contemporary Liturgics

FLIES IN THE OINTMENT

John M. Grondelski

Problems with how liturgical studies uses history and canon law are tied together by an undercurrent: how liturgical studies fails to use theology.

Leo XIV: A Rough Sketch

NEW OXFORD NOTEBOOK

Pieter Vree

Peace has been a consistent message of Leo’s early in his tenure, and in this he is in continuity with his 20th- and 21st-century predecessors.

Medium Unwell

CULTURAL COUNTERPOINT

Jason M. Morgan

We are caught in a new age of New Age, a time of technological idolatry in which everyone is fighting in a spiritual war that so very few even realize is underway.

Are You a Vinegar Catholic?

GUEST COLUMN

Andrew M. Seddon

My wife and I visited a new parish. The “greeters” at the door might have been recruited from a squadron of grim reapers at the entrance to Hell in Dante’s Inferno.

James Likoudis, R.I.P.

GUEST COLUMN

Philip E. Blosser & Andrew Likoudis

He is a shining example of unwavering dedication to the Church, a beacon of hope for those navigating the complexities of faith in the modern world.

Genesis: A Revolutionary Reading

Inez Fitzgerald Storck

The biblical account presents a totally radical worldview in contrast to ancient pagan civilizations and their errors -- and from modern renditions of those errors.

An Invitation to a Spiritual Smorgasbord

Preston R. Simpson

Douthat is correct that people come to faith in various ways. But his message is that Christianity is simply one path among many, all of which are suitable.

Briefly Reviewed: July-August 2025

Here we review The Holiness of Ordinary People... and He Gave Us So Much: A Tribute to Benedict XVI