John Henry Newman is the Augustine of the modern era.1 More still: Newman "resolves and redeems" all that was left unresolved and unredeemed in the historical Augustine.2 This is the view of the Polish-German Jesuit Erich Przywara, one of the gateway figures for Newman's reception in the German-speaking world. Yet, outside...
There are two translations of Sigrid Undset’s remarkable trilogy, Kristin Lavransdatter. That by Archer and Scott came out promptly after the Norwegian originals in the early 1920s. Undset had lived in London, spoke English fluently, and knew the translators. She would have been consulted on fine points. I am told by...
Although the miracle of the loaves and the fishes isn’t in itself a miracle of the Eucharist, it is nonetheless a miracle we can describe as Eucharistic. This isn’t just because it points to the Eucharist. The miracle is Eucharistic in a deeper sense, because in itself it reminds us...
Somewhere in The Idea of a University — Discourse VII, I discover — Newman unfolds a battle flag I have long saluted. He is struggling against utilitarian principles in education; he finds that far from being recent innovations they go back directly to Locke; and he is aware that as champion of...
The extraordinary presentation of the Old Testament in the liturgy: as a whole library of ancient texts that are all about Christ. Re-new-al, re-nova-tion, restoration: even the bright lights of the “Renaissance” (a term desperately in need of qualification) knew that making new means going backwards. Backwards towards the new. Newman:...