On September 3, 2000, Pope John Paul II, the Vicar of Christ beloved even by Jews, beatified Pius IX, one of his predecessors who reigned from 1846-1878. He was a nasty anti-Semite who re-established the ghetto in Rome and was instrumental in the kidnapping of a six-year old Jew boy who had been forcibly converted to Catholicism and whom the church itself kept in the Vatican away from his parents. These are not the least of his sins; nor are they the worst. But they contribute richly to his biography as a Jew-hater.

Caritas in Veritate:

On Integral Human Development in Charity and Truth

By Pope Benedict XVI

(Ignatius Press, 157 pp., $14.95)

I.

Are we facing an economic crisis? I do not mean the crisis of the credit markets that has wiped trillions off the global balance sheet and plunged the world into recession. I mean a spiritual crisis, of which the crash is but a symptom. According to Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, we are in the midst of a “late capitalist . . . countdown to social dissolution and the triumph of infinite exchangeability and timeless, atomized desire.” The only way to interrupt this countdown, he suggests, is for all of us to pattern our actions on divine love. A number of intellectuals--ranging from former Maoists such as Alain Badiou to dialectical materialists such as Slavoj Žižek--have made similar diagnoses, and proposed similar solutions. And to their company must now be added the pope.

It's hard not to laugh, or at least smile, when you see, say, Larry McMurtry give glowing praise to Gore Vidal's new memoir in the New York Review of Books. After all, this is the publication commonly known as the New York Review of Each Other's Books. But on the incestuous reviewing front, I was glad to see that National Review is giving NYRB a run for its money.

Monday, October 9

Dear Damon,

CATHOLIC MATTERS: CONFUSION, CONTROVERSY, AND THE SPLENDOR OF TRUTH

By Richard John Neuhaus

(Basic Books, 272 pp., $25)

If Patrick Buchanan is anything, one might think, he's a good Catholic. Unlike other miscreant politicians (Mario Cuomo, for example), he's clearly true to the faith, loyal to the authority of the Church. Buchanan, like the Jesuit teachers of his youth, is often portrayed by the secular media as one of "the pope's Marines," fearlessly vying for the Church Militant against its foes. The man who has been quick to accuse other Catholics of straying from the faith is presented as beyond theological reproach.