Letters to the Editor: July-August 2021

Dispatch from a Dusty Room... The Sterility that Destroys Genuine Self-Gift... A Real Hero... Keeping it Together... Atheism of Words & Deeds... Safety Charades... and more

The News You May Have Missed: July-August 2021

Belgian Border Blunder... One Man’s Compost Fence Is Another Man’s Poop Wall... Unhappy Meal... Worker Bees... Living Nightmare... and more

A Perfect Media Maelstrom

VIRTUAL TORNADO LEAVES 160 DEAD

Eric Brende

The Joplin tornado of May 2011 showed the populace had come to rely on media in place of their own eyeballs for weather reports.

Walker Percy, the Episcopal Church & Kierkegaard’s “Apostle”

ON SPEAKING WITH AUTHORITY

Thomas H. Hubert

Kierkegaard’s concept of “the Apostle” influenced Percy’s presentation of character and theological insight in his fiction.

Some Dare Call It Schism

NEW OXFORD NOTEBOOK

Pieter Vree

The German Church has launched a program of reforms with elements that, if approved by the bishops’ conference, would contradict longstanding Catholic teaching.

World on FIRE

CULTURAL COUNTERPOINT

Jason M. Morgan

The FIRE strategy -- which stands for financial independence, retire early -- doesn’t alter the debt-peonage economy; it just carves out exceptions for a select few.

The Wanting Seed. By Anthony Burgess.

WHAT SEEMED ABSURD IN 1962 NOW APPEARS FRIGHTENINGLY QUOTIDIAN

Michael S. Rose

The book seemed absurd when it appeared in 1962. Sixty years later, lipstick-wearing men, sex changes, and overzealous population controllers are common.

Literal Testosterone to Figurative Estrogen

John Lyon

Leon Podles describes the tension between masculinity and Christianity, and aims to scope out the likely role of men in the future of the Church.

A Mathematical Analysis of the Qur’an

Anne Barbeau Gardiner

Texts have a “signature,” or a kind of DNA, that allows us to determine whether a book was written by one or several authors. The Qur’an has traces of at least thirty.

Briefly Reviewed: July-August 2021

Here we review America’s Teilhard: Christ and Hope in the 1960s by Susan Kassman Sack.

Last Things: July-August 2021

David Mills

“Don’t you fear dying?” a young woman asked me. I said I feared not dying. For her, death is the end of a life of pleasure. For me, it's the end of decline.