How does Islam impact Western culture? William Kilpatrick challenges the typical perspective in Christianity, Islam, and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West. He looks at the essence of Islam, the life of Muhammad, and the teaching of the Koran. In doing so, he shows that Islam threatens the Western way of life, and Christianity in particular. But what is this threat and why don’t more people recognize it?
Some say Islam is a moderate religion of peace that condemns Islamic...
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) is an artist of common sense and his medium is the English language. His words flow like beautiful music. They catch you, hold you, and satisfy you. Dale Ahlquist allows one to tour the magnitude of Chesterton’s works while keeping both feet on the ground in The Complete Thinker: The Marvelous Mind of G.K. Chesterton. The reader will hear Chesterton skillfully proclaim the truth that resonates in mind and heart. Ahlquist reveals this brilliant, pithy, and...
A myth, like a gun, can be deadly. But myths are unloaded guns. Exposing the empty barrel removes the threat to bystanders and the one taking aim. Everyone benefits from the truth, but not everyone takes it well. Even blanks can backfire. Thus, truth always requires the company of charity.
Catholic myths can lead people astray, prevent some from entering the Church, and embarrass the faithful. Thus, we need guys like Christopher Kaczor and his latest work, The Seven Big Myths about the...
Born sometime between 1833 and 1848 in Hannibal, Missouri, Julia Greeley was freed during the Civil War although we don’t know if she was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation or if her master set her free of his own accord. All we know of her parents is their first names, George and Cerilda. As for her own name, it is “most likely that Julia took the name Greeley from Horace Greeley, who endeared himself to many black people...by strongly urging Lincoln to emancipate the...
What’s the cost of religious liberty? Perhaps your life.
In a short companion to the epic film, For Greater Glory: The True Story of Christida, Ruben Quezada tells how he first learned about the forgotten story of Mexico’s struggle for religious freedom. When a young Ruben picked up a worn holy card, an elderly priest said, “Fr. Pro! He’s Mexican, like you. Don’t you know about him? He was killed in Mexico for being a priest.” Ruben recounts, “Then, to my surprise, he...
R. Jay Magill’s book Sincerity (W.W. Norton: 2012) was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal and that tricked me into thinking that it was a serious book. It is an extraordinary exercise in pseudo-intellectual hyperbolism. What is shocking is that it would be published by a “legitimate” publishing house and presumably read as a philosophic essay.
I should have known from the subtitle that something was seriously wrong with the book. How a moral idea born five hundred years ago inspired...
Flipping on the news on any given day can be overwhelming, and trying to form a political stance from it all can be quite daunting. How do we sort it out? Amidst multimedia bombardment, do we stop to consider where policies even derive?
Here is help!
Evangelical James Robison and Catholic Jay Richards set forth a well-reasoned and clearly articulated political guidebook that’s infused with the light of rational faith. Indivisible: Restoring Faith, Family, and Freedom Before It’s...
We all know the parable of the prodigal son. The prodigal goes to his father, demands his inheritance early, and wisps away to waste his fortune in lasciviousness and profligacy. The son’s life degenerates to the lowest possible point: he finds himself longing for the pods upon which the swine eat. As the son realizes the depths to which he has descended, he experiences an epiphany in his reasoning process: his erstwhile life presents itself to his consciousness, and his conversion...
Compiled by Peter Celano
It is challenging to focus on preparing for the true meaning of Christmas when every commercial environment is promoting the secular meaning of the holiday. That is when Peter Celano’s book “Christmas with the Holy Fathers” (Paraclete Press, $17.95) becomes a gem.
This little book is a compilation of passages taken from various addresses given by the Holy Fathers, from Pope St. Leo the Great to the two most recent pontiffs. The variety of speakers and topics...
Book written by: Linda and Rocco Maniscalco
Family traditions are often at the heart of childhood memories, and this is even more the case if the tradition is part of a family’s ethnic identity. Though my family’s Lithuanian heritage only played a big part of our lives at Christmas, I still remember the white straw Christmas tree ornaments and the seven meatless dishes fondly from childhood.
Giving tribute to their own family and cultural traditions, Linda and Rocco Maniscalco have...
