"…who watch Fox News, listen to Rush Limbaugh, and read The Weekly Standard."
That's on the envelope of an ad for Commentary that I received today. Sorry, folks, you're 0 for 3 on that list. Though actually the offer is sort of tempting: $19.95 for a year. Commentary does publish some stuff that interests me. But also a good deal that doesn't, and I don't need another magazine sitting around the house nagging me to read it.
Ha! Those three things would points against my ever subscribing. Over the past few years I’ve let most of my periodical subscriptions lapse. I get only three now, all quarterlies. A friend gave me a gift subs. to First Things, but other than the odd article or book review (and D.B. Hart’s column) I don’t really like it much, and probably won’t renew.
I only have three as well. Never have had very many. It’s two more-or-less-monthlies, and one bimonthly, and I still have trouble keeping up.
I read FT off and on in its early days, and they always had some good stuff, but too much of it seemed aimed at academics, or just wasn’t of much interest to me for some other reason. I’m looking at the toc of its most recent issue, though, and it looks pretty interesting.
Yeah, I guess a lot of the stuff in FT is interesting, but I don’t really find it vital or “necessary.”
What three do you subscribe to? I get Modern Age, Intercollegiate Review, and Sewanee Review.
Touchstone, The Atlantic, and The New Criterion. The Atlantic annoys me on a regular basis, and a lot of it is fluff from my point of view, sometimes offensive fluff. But there’s enough good stuff for me to keep it, partly to keep myself from being in too much of a Christian/conservative bubble.
How do you like The New Criterion? I’ve thought of giving it a go.
Of the three, it might be the one I’d miss the most. Hate to say that relative to Touchstone, because it’s not a Christian publication, but I like the writing on the arts, for the most part. They usually have significant chunks of each issue online, so you’d be able to get an idea there. http://www.newcriterion.com/ I don’t read their blogs, too much sort of garden-variety conservative rhetoric when I’ve sampled them.
That’s just odd. That’s 0 for 3 for me, as well, and an ad like that is more likely to make me not want to subscribe to it than anything else. Except . . . I’ve subscribed to Commentary for years, and (generally) been happy with it.
I’ve been on the prowl for another periodical, though, and up until I read this thread I was thinking that First Things may be the way to go. Hadn’t read anything about New Criterion until your link, and I’d be interested to hear you hold forth on the various strengths and the differences, if you’re willing.
Just very briefly, because I want to go to sleep as soon as possible: FT is more like Commentary than it’s like TNC. Or is it…no sooner did I write that than I questioned it. I seem to remember it being said some years ago that FT aspired to be a Christian counterpart to Commentary. But in any case the biggest single difference is that FT is Christian, and TNC is secular. It’s pretty eclectic religiously, and does publish Christian writers (a really good essay a few issues back by David Bentley Hart). And it’s more focused on arts ‘n’ culture than FT. But you won’t find any straight-up theology in TNC at all, like you do in FT.
This article offers another reason to tell John Podhoretz to find himself another sucker.
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2012/02/kevin-madiganrsquos-offenses-against-history
Good grief. So much for inter-faith good will. Never did care much for J Podhoretz. Thanks for pointing this out. I’m tempted to see if I can find that mailing and return it to them with a complaint.
Ronald Rychlak pointed out that Commentary has been publishing articles by Madigan on this topic for 12 years and that Madigan had favorably reviewed John Cornwall’s work. Although Madigan is a church historian, he does not rely on any primary source material for these articles.
Commentary has also published work by Robert Wistrich in this vein and Hyam Maccoby as well. All three men who have edited the publication since 1960 have approved this sort of work for publication, though it has been more frequent since the elder Podhoretz retired in 1995. This is their editorial line.
One other thing. The Weekly Standard has promoted the work of Rabbi David Dalin, who has called Pius xii a righteous gentile. The Podhoretz and Kristol clans have their differences.
And a good thing, it appears. I didn’t realize NP had retired that long ago. Obviously I don’t read Commentary very often. Very rarely, as a matter of fact.
Doino also mentions Madigan’s fondness for the Cornwall book. Looks like Madigan might be Catholic. Sigh.
Rabbi Dalin’s interpretation of the controversy has been that the work of Phayer and Zuccotti, et al were salvos in an intramural squabble between orthodox and revisionist Catholics and that Jews simply had no dog in that argument.
I don’t recognize those names but that sounds like a prudent policy.
I surely hope Pius XII is vindicated when the full contents of the Vatican archives on his papacy are made public — I think within a couple of years? Interesting piece on all this was published in The Jewish Daily Forward last year, “Church Leaders Showing Rifts Over Vatican’s Pius XII Papers” http://www.forward.com/articles/136983/church-leaders-showing-rifts-over-vatican-s-piu/#ixzz1pyRcp4Mj — it highlights the frustration felt by Jewish leaders who were told 24 years ago that they’d have access to the full archives and yet they still don’t have it.
My wife is the archivist for our diocese, and she says “secret” is not a good translation of the Italian (or Latin?) word–that it really just means “private.” The word “secret” gives it a dark tone that isn’t really warranted. I expect this delay has in part to do with the Vatican having different priorities. And since there’s such a witch hunt mentality about Pius XII in some quarters maybe they’re being extra cautious. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are at least a few documents in there that won’t look too good, and those will be the only ones anybody hears about.
It’s understandable, though, that the name “Archivum Secretum Vaticanum” would cause a raised eyebrow or two.
With regard to Vatican priorities, I think Archbishop Dolan was exactly right when he said, as reported in that Forward article, “Whatever is needed to complete this project [opening the archives] — even in phases, rather than only as a whole — I suggest must be explored.”
At a glance, yes, but serious scholars and journalists ought not to exploit it. Especially when outside researchers have been able to get access to the archivum secretum since 1881. I think there’s an element of playing on the sort of atavistic fear of the Church that you see in movies when cowled and chanting monks mean “scary.”
I meant to say last night, btw, that it doesn’t speak well of The Forward’s good faith that they use that picture of Pius XII walking by a Nazi guard, the same or similar picture as the cover of Hitler’s Pope.
Dolan does make a good point, though, esp. since there is a movement to beatify Pius XII.
I didn’t take note of that photo when I first read the article. You’re right, not a sign of good faith on the Forward’s part, playing semi-subliminal games like that. And I see it’s dated 1929, so that wouldn’t even be a Nazi guard, would it?
True, and also not a pope:
“‘Eugenio Pacelli, before his election to the papacy, leaving a reception for President Hindenburg in Berlin, 1927.’ Worse yet, this photo — which has been used before in its full clarity — is now cropped and blurred so one cannot easily see that the two German soldiers surrounding Pacelli are not Nazis but ordinary German soldiers in the pre-Nazi Weimar Republic! If this is not deliberately lying through a picture, what is? The blatant misuse of the cover photo of Hitler’s Pope symbolizes the rank dishonesty of the entire book, and sets the stage for the hurricane of lies contained within its covers.”
http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=3124
Light On Dark Water 
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