Mirror of Justice

The "Tournament of Novels" at First Things

My own mind tends to focus more on other tournaments during March but . . . the good folks at First Things are running their "Tournament of Novels" over at the First Thoughts blog.  Head over and vote (early and often) for Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian (and four others of your choice).  My four, for what it's worth, were The Brothers Karamazov, The First Circle, Silence, and The Power and the Glory.

A justified cavil from a reader

An MoJ reader has written to express agreement with what I posted about the Kennedys, but to "cavil" as he put it, on one point.  I said that JFK did not "even try" to impose his religion on himself.  The reader points out that none of us can say that definitively, since no one can read another's heart.  He's right.  I should have said that nothing in the historical record demonstrates efforts by Kennedy before or during his presidency to stop committing adultery---on moral grounds, at least. There was a point shortly before his election as President when he lamented to a confidant that it would be impossible, as a practical matter, to continue his womanizing while in the White House.  Very quickly after his inauguration, however, he discovered ways to keep it going.  There is much in the record to show that after acts of adultery he immediately began planning future such acts and making the arrangements necessary to pull them off without being exposed and damaged politically.

John Allen and Globalization

This is the seventh installment of our examination of John Allen’s book, The Future Church.This time, we consider with Allen the Church in relation to globalization.

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