Catholicism

Beyond Belief

The Secret Gospel of Thomas

by Elaine Pagels

God's Secretaries

The Making of the King James Bible

by Adam Nicolson

The New Anti-Catholicism

The Last Acceptable Prejudice

by Philip Jenkins

TOM DASCHLE may no longer call himself a Catholic. The Senate minority leader and the highest ranking Democrat in Washington has been sent a letter by his home diocese of Sioux Falls, sources in South Dakota have told The Weekly Standard, directing him to remove from his congressional biography and campaign documents all references to his standing as a member of the Catholic Church.

This isn't exactly excommunication--which is unnecessary, in any case, since Daschle made himself ineligible for communion almost 20 years ago with his divorce and remarriage to a Washington lobbyist.

THERE'S A HUNGER in the world of public intellectuals and chattering commentators--among everyone from Unitarian peace activists to hawkish Catholic neoconservatives--for just-war theory to work like a gumball machine: You pay your money, and you get your answer.

A Moral Reckoning
The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair
by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
Knopf, 362 pp., $25

IN ITS JANUARY 21, 2002, ISSUE, the New Republic devoted twenty-four pages to Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's "What Would Jesus Have Done?"--one of the most virulent attacks against the Roman Catholic Church ever printed in a major American publication.

GOP LOVES NEA?

On November 14, after a delay of nearly nine months, the Senate confirmed the appointment of David Gelernter to serve on the National Council on the Arts. A painter, writer, and computer-science professor at Yale (to say nothing of his being a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard), Gelernter brings important gifts to the council, which acts as the advisory board for the National Endowment for the Arts.

President Bush's first chairman of the NEA, Michael Hammond, died suddenly on January 29, six days after taking office.

Blood of Victory
by Alan Furst
Random House, 237 pp., $24.95

IT CAN BE A PLEASING HAPPENSTANCE how one becomes acquainted with an author--a book review, an appealing title perhaps, but more often word-of-mouth recommendation. Until a few months ago, I had not heard of Alan Furst. Then within a matter of days, two friends were astounded to hear this. To remedy what apparently was a lamentable oversight, I quickly got a copy of the first novel in his famous series, "Night Soldiers "(1988), and was dazzled.

The Prophets
Who They Were; What They Are
by Norman Podhoretz
Free Press, 400 pp., $30

ONE FALL DAY, while I was in San Francisco, a friend took me to his favorite spot of pilgrimage--the memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. The design is impressive. A narrow path leads past a wall filled with quotations from the writings of Dr. King, while the visitor hears the crushing sound of water cascading to the ground on the other side of the path.

As we walked, I read the various quotations from King.

The Skeptic
A Life of H.L. Mencken
by Terry Teachout
HarperCollins, 432 pp., $29.95

IN THE FALL OF 1923, James M. Cain, a reporter then aspiring to a literary career, had lunch in Baltimore with H.L. Mencken, who was on the verge of launching a new journal, the American Mercury. Despite the fact, or perhaps because of the fact, that Mencken did nearly all the talking during a four-hour meal, Cain left under the spell.

Gladly to Learn and Gladly to Teach
Essays on Religion and Political Philosophy in Honor of Ernest L. Fortin, A.A.
edited by Michael P. Foley and Douglas Kries
Lexington, 344 pp., $75

Dissent and Philosophy in the Middle Ages
Dante and His Precursors
by Ernest L. Fortin
Lexington, 182 pp., $22.95

THE EXTRAORDINARY SCHOLAR, political philosopher, and theologian Father Ernest Fortin passed away on Tuesday, October 22, at age seventy-eight, surrounded by Carmelite sisters praying the rosary on his behalf.

IF YOU HAVEN'T been able to read all the writing about Pius XII, the Catholic Church, and the Holocaust, you needn't feel too bad. Not even scholars in the field have been able to keep up. By my count, there have been at least fourteen books on the subject in the last three years, with the threat of more to come.

Some of these run contrary to type. The very liberal Catholic Justus George Lawler, for instance, constructs a witty and learned defense against Pius's attackers in his recent "Popes and Politics." But mostly the books keep to their origins.