Let me do something that Panagiotis “Taki” Theodoracopulos can’t be expected to do, at least not graciously: namely, acknowledge his lapses, both factual and moral. I’m speaking of his column in the Herald’s Christmas issue, published to the chagrin of many of the magazine’s friends. In it, Taki attempted to mount a defence of the

While many were enjoying the Christmas season at home with their families and away from a frantic news climate of daily revelations about pub­lic figures, both religious and secular, a rift seemed to open between two of America’s most prominent clergymen. Despite the best efforts of the US bishops’ conference convening in Illinois in the

In this annual round-up I will restrict myself to focusing only on books that deal explicitly with spirituality, notwithstanding some very fine novels and books on social commentary that I read this past year. But first, an apologia: taste is idiosyncratic. Keep that in mind as you read these recommendations. These are books that I

Over the Christmas break, I spent a fair amount of time binge-watching Jordan Peterson videos. For those not in the know, Peterson is not the latest hip-hop sensation; he is a psychology professor from Toronto who has made a rather substantial splash as a culture commentator and public intellectual, largely through appearances on social media.

George Tyrrell (1861-1909) was the posthumous son of an Anglican journalist in Dublin. Raised in poverty, he converted in 1879 and joined the Jesuits the following year. After being ordained in 1891, he was posted to the prestigious Jesuit secondary school Stonyhurst (successor to its college at St Omer, France, where Archbishop John Carroll and

Cryptic across 5 Outrageous civil antics of a certain Protestant (11) 7 Two girls side by side on the piano (6) 8 Drag a negative Italian to the lake (6) 9 Old city, one a Hittite originally constructed in the OT character (5) 11 Armorican with a cap on’s not oriental (6) 13 Book about

In January, television channels are packed with advertisements featuring families frolicking in clear blue swimming pools and couples walking hand-in-hand along sandy beaches. In these dark, tiring months, we dream of escaping our drab surroundings. But some of us crave something other than action-packed foreign holidays: a peaceful retreat, either alone or with our families.

The celebration of a Christmastide wedding was a really beautiful way to begin the New Year. What a powerful expression of hope a marriage is, especially if, like this one, the couple are practising Catholics and faith is the deepest motivation of their lives. That the wedding day itself marked the real beginning of married

After Epiphany, the Church teases forth into liturgical celebrations different manifestations of the Lord’s divinity, including His baptism by John in the Jordan. This is our Sunday celebration in the Ordinary Form, commemorated as well in the Extraordinary. After His baptism, Christ went for 40 days into the desert to be tempted. During that same

The Baptism of the Lord Is 42:1-4 & 6-7; Acts 10:34-38; Lk 3:15-16 & 21-22 (Year C) “Now, while Jesus after his own baptism was at prayer, heaven opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily shape, like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the beloved; my

The Architecture of Law: Rebuilding Law in the Classical Tradition By Brian McCall University of Notre Dame Press, 560pp, £55/$70 Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous dictum, “the common law is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky”, today serves as an epitaph for the natural law tradition. In its place, legal positivism became the dominant theory

Written in History: Letters that Changed the World By Simon Sebag-Montefiore, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 272pp, £14.99/$20 A title such as this places a certain responsibility on the shoulders of the selector – he has made himself the arbiter of letters of real significance down the centuries, which will necessarily be a small group. In practice,