Jonathan Wright, Author at Catholic Herald

Jonathan Wright

April 28, 2016

The film-maker Steven Spielberg has made some brave choices during his glittering career, but telling the extraordinary tale of Edgardo Mortara is likely to be one of his most challenging projects. In Bologna in June 1858, the six-year-old Edgardo was removed from the Bologna home of his Jewish parents. A former servant of the family

The startling maths of Marian apparitions

April 28, 2016

Our Lady of the Nations by Chris Maunder OUP, £25 It seems reasonable to suggest that when Catholics feel threatened or culturally out of step they “seek divine sanction for alternatives”. Does this account, as Chris Maunder would have us believe, for the proliferation and potency of Marian visions “during periods of ideological conflict and

The power of words to make us who we are

April 21, 2016

The Language Animal by Charles Taylor Belknap Press, £25.95 Many philosophers remain loyal to a strictly functionalist understanding of language. Ideas (which are what really count) arise in the mind and we attach words (which are really just tools) to them. The process is terribly important, since it allows us to codify reality and communicate

Why we still need to talk about sin

April 14, 2016

The Dark Side of the Soul by Stephen Cherry Bloomsbury, £16.99 Stephen Cherry does not under-estimate the terrible consequences of sin. It can “open up unimagined trajectories of harm and hurt and diminishment”. Sin is an extremely useful concept, however, at least if we wish to fathom the workings of the human mind and soul.

Catholics grappling with modernity

April 07, 2016

In the Lógos of Love Edited by Fr James Heft and Una Cadegan Oxford University Press, £22.99 Sometimes, writes one of this volume’s contributors, the Catholic intellectual tradition is “presented as little more than the texts of the magisterium and agreeable philosophers coupled with a narrowly curated list of illustrative moments in architecture, literature, music, and

Acts of the Apostles as cable television

March 24, 2016

New Testament Basics for Catholics by John Bergsma Ave Maria Press, £11.99 “Wow!”; “Not bad!”; “Ready to begin? Good!” These are just a few of the exclamations that punctuate John Bergsma’s energetic guide to the New Testament. Many will find the chatty tone rather irritating, but the book has an admirable purpose: to explain crucial

How religion helps science leap forward

March 17, 2016

The Penultimate Curiosity by Roger Wagner and Andrew Briggs OUP, £25 The authors of this splendid book inform us that they do not seek an “answer [to] the million dollar question” of “whether and in what way ‘science’ and ‘religion’ were or were not compatible”. Rather, they look at why there has been such a

Putting the case for Christianity in court

March 17, 2016

Christians and the State by John Duddington Gracewing, £12.99 John Duddington was greatly inspired by Benedict XVI’s Westminster Hall address in September 2010. The pope asked where the “ethical foundations for political choices” were to be found and pointed to the role of religion – not so much in producing “concrete political solutions” as in

Straight talking from Ignatius on the Church

March 03, 2016

A Church of Passion and Hope by Gill Goulding Bloomsbury, £24.99 Gill Goulding rightly identifies The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola as one of the most “dynamic, determinative and durable” texts in the Christian tradition. She notes, however, that one short section – the “rules of thinking, judging and feeling with the Church” – has

The rebel martyrs still revered in the barrios

February 25, 2016

Mexican Exodus by Julia Young OUP, £47.99 At the dawn of the 20th century Mexico possessed a “culture that was thoroughly steeped in Catholic devotion, ritual and practice”. Large swathes of the population were therefore devastated by what happened next. Following the revolution of 1910, anti-clerical sentiment soared and increasingly debilitating legislation, aimed at the

A great big Latin American muddle

February 18, 2016

Migrant Hearts and the Atlantic Return by Valentina Napolitano Fordham, £18.99 During the course of her book, Valentina Napolitano mentions a host of tensions and dilemmas that apparently define the relationship between Rome and the Latin American Church. “The longstanding and unhelpful division between popular and institutional Catholicism” makes an appearance, as does the “Catholic

Why Catholicism is democracy’s friend

February 11, 2016

Democracy, Culture, Catholicism Edited by Michael Schuck and John Crowley-Buck Fordham, £25 During the Soviet era, Lithuania’s Catholic churches were turned into cinemas and museums, priests were deported and religious symbols were banished from the public sphere. The faithful were left with a perilously “narrow space”. And yet Catholicism remained the “main social resource for

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