J. Bottum

At the time this article was published, J. Bottum was books and arts editor of The Weekly Standard and a Crisis contributing editor.

recent articles

The Moral Coherence of the Catholic Politician

On January 16, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) issued something it called a “Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life.” Declaring that Catholic politicians have “a duty to be morally coherent,” the note insisted that “a well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to … Read more

Pope Pius XII and the Nazis

He was a cosseted Renaissance prince, and he looked like an el Greco painting, as whip thin and dangerous as a pistol, as ascetic as a razor. He was a Victorian Italian, born in 1876, and entirely a product of his place and time. But he was also “a big man,” in the sense in … Read more

Lectio Divina: Flannery O’Connor Banned

This summer, the bishop of Lafayette, Louisiana, banned the racist texts of Flannery O’Connor from the schools in his diocese. You hardly know where to begin when faced with a proposition like that. The only Catholic admitted by mainstream secular literary critics to the canon of 20th-century American authors—now excised by Catholics. A major southern … Read more

Behind O’Brians Mask: Lectio Divina

So, it turns out, Patrick O’Brian was a liar, a child-abandoner, and a generally nasty piece of work. Before his death this year at the age of 85, the enormously popular author told—in a series of 20 volumes that have sold more than three million copies—the ongoing adventures of Capt. John Aubrey and Dr. Stephen … Read more

Lectio Divinia: The Prime of Miss Muriel Spark

There’s a revealing moment toward the end of Muriel Spark’s 1992 memoir of her early career, Curriculum Vitae. Times were hard for her in 1953. She was 35 and still quite poor—so poor that when, the next year, she began to have the hallucinations that prompted her first novel, The Comforters, her doctor assumed that … Read more

Lectio Divinia: All the Same McInerny

There’s an American Catholic philosopher teaching at Notre Dame who writes things like this: “Maritain’s teaching on the relation between philosophy of nature and experimental science, surely one of the most carefully worked out of the Thomist solutions, was not thought adequate by Charles DeKoninck of Laval or by the River Forest Dominicans.” There’s a … Read more

Morris West: The 20th Century’s Most Popular Catholic Writer

On October 9th, in Sydney, Australia, the most popular Catholic writer of the 20th century died at the age of 83, disdained by nearly everyone. Well, no, that’s not quite right. But how does one explain the phenomenon of Morris West? He is in truth more like the Italian-American storyteller Mario Puzo, whose 1969 The … Read more

J.F. Powers: The 20 Century’s Best, But Forgotten, Writer

On June 12, 1999, in Collegeville, Minnesota, the finest American Catholic writer of the 20th century died at the age of 81—leaving behind him almost nothing as a legacy His name was James Farl Powers—J.E Powers, as he signed himself—and over the last 50 years, he published only five books, one a decade, to some … Read more

Item added to cart.
0 items - $0.00

Orthodox. Faithful. Free.

Signup to receive new Crisis articles daily

Email subscribe stack
Share to...