The Long View Religion
I am what is known as an "orthodox" Roman Catholic. This means that, while my views are conservative, I do not think I am any more Catholic than the Pope. This is an important point
Readers who have looked under the other headings of this Web site will have noticed a certain theological twist in everything I write. Here are some pieces that deal directly with religious questions. Just click on the underlined words:
2011
The Reformation: A History
[Diarmaid MacCulloch on one of God's Great Mistakes.]
The Interior Castle
[Saint Teresa of Avila describes the best case.]
2010
Revelation of the Magi [Brent Landau's translation and commentary of an ancient Syriac text that is not quite the Party Line.]
Findings [Charles Upton chronicles the decay of Traditionalism in the latter Kali Yuga.]
The Red Book
[Carl Gustav Jung's psyche in illuminated color, also called Liber Novus.]
2009
American Babylon [Father Richard John Neuhaus's last book was on politics in the light of the eschaton.]
2008
Earthly Powers [Michael Burleigh on "The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe, from the French Revolution to the Great War."]
Eschatology [Joseph Ratzinger (later Benedict XVI) on Death, Eternal Life, and the End of the World.]
2007
Spe Salvi [A review of Benedict XVI's second encyclical, Saved by Hope. The document is really about the idea of progress.]
Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion [David Gelernter assures Americans that they are not as other men.]
2006
The Future of Peace and Justice in the Global Village [Thomas R. McFaul looks to the great prophet John Rawls for the key to universal religious concord.]
Kingdom Coming
[Michelle Goldberg explains why Christianity is a menace to the Republic.]
American Theocracy
[Kevin Phillips makes a confused critique of religion in public life; it has something to do with the Bush Administration.]
2005
Augustine: A Biography
[Peter Brown's life of the theologian at the end of the world.]
The Second Religiousness in the 21st Century
[Presented at the 34th Annual Conference of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations.]
The Next Christendom:The Coming of Global Christianity [Philip Jenkins on the role of Christianity in the 21st-century world.]
2004
Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century
[Mark Sedgwick argues, correctly, that Rene Guenon's philosophy has been more influential than it is given credit for.]
Where C.S. Lewis & Hermann Hesse Meet
The Pilgrim's Regress and The Journey to the East should be on the same reading lists.
The Coming World Civilization
(William Ernest Hocking surmises what the role of Christianity will be in the world after modernity.)
2003
The Making of Late Antiquity
(Peter Brown's account of why Christianity truimphed in the Roman Empire.]
2002
The Hermetic Tradition
(Julius Evola's Faustian account of alchemy.)
Revolt Against the Modern World
(The Magic Baron Evola indicts Christianity, among most other things.)
2001
Daemonomania
(John Crowley continues his exploration of the hermetic twilight in this third novel of the "Aegypt" series.)
1999
TechGnosis
(Erik Davis's late 90s assessment of the spiritual dimension of cyberspace. It has aged reasonably well.)
Surpassing Wonder (Donald Harman Akenson's account of the "invention" of the Bible and the Talmuds.)
1998
The Duty to Know
(This is an admiring but somewhat Spenglerian take on John Paul II's encyclical, "Fides et Ratio.")
Religion and Governance--A Response
(This note is a critique of a paper prepared for the European Commission about the role of religion in public life in the 21st century.)
The Future of the Papacy
(I was sufficiently annoyed by Fr. Richard McBrien's book, "The Lives of the Popes," to write this essay explaining why the schemes of the Jesuit liberals will come to naught.)
The Obvious Proof
(This is a brief discussion of the new versions that have appeared in recent years of the Argument from Design for the existence of God. The authors suggest that divine design is sufficiently obvious that atheism can have only a psychological explanation.)
1997
World Government and the Roman Catholic Church
(This essay is about the role of the international system in Catholic social theory. I wrote it specifically for the edification of the isolationist wing of the Catholic political right in the United States. You know who you are.)
Spirit Wars
(The subtitle of this book by the theologian Peter Jones is "Pagan Renewal in Christian America." More reasons, if more were needed, to dislike Gnosticism.)
Ecumenical Jihad
(A program for an interfaith alliance of believers in natural law to fight the culture wars. Metaphorically, of course.)
1996
God or Goddess?
(This is a book review of an excellent critique of feminist theology.)
Active Faith
(Ralph Reed, the Director of the Christian Coaltion, here explains what that organization is all about. Maybe the future is not what it used to be.)
The Politics of Meaning
(This review of Michael Lerner's book will explain what Hillary Rodham Clinton meant by "The Politics of Virtue." God, it seems, is a socialist.)
The Celestine Prophecy
(This is a book review of The Book That Would Not Die, or even get off the best-seller lists.)
Links
The Holy See
(The Vatican website. Cool graphics. Seriously.)
Beliefnet
(This is one of the most interesting webzines of any description, but it happens to be about religion.)
First Things
(No, I am not affiliated with this journal, but they have been kind enough to publish a few of my articles in the past.)
John's Creeping Homepage of Doom
(A Pagan site, indeed. Also some cool graphics, but not as good as the the pope's.)
Latin Chant
(How I spend Sunday mornings.) [BE: I like to think this is John spends all his time now.]