Free Republic

In the opening sentence of the last chapter of his new book, “Reason, Faith and Revolution,” the British critic Terry Eagleton asks, “Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God?” His answer, elaborated in prose that is alternately witty, scabrous and angry, is that the other candidates for guidance — science, reason, liberalism, capitalism — just don’t deliver what is ultimately needed. “What other symbolic form,” he queries, “has managed to forge such direct links between the most universal and absolute of truths and the everyday practices of countless millions of men and women?” Eagleton acknowledges...

At any given time in human history, there are always among us great men and women whose lives pass before us like magnificent spectacles, fabulous morality tales, heroic epics. None of them, however, appear to write for the Guardian. At the best of times, the Guardian in full-rant is rarely burdened with good sense or good taste. Its twisted left-wing moralizing is often absurdly Pythonesque, sans laughs, and dully predictable, so most Britons shrug it off and buy another paper instead. But today’s issue puts the limbo pole of editorial wisdom flat on the ground and still manages to wiggle...

The Pope has blood on his hands The Pope did great damage to the church, and to countless Catholics Terry Eagleton Monday April 4, 2005 Guardian John Paul II became Pope in 1978, just as the emancipatory 60s were declining into the long political night of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. As the economic downturn of the early 70s began to bite, the western world made a decisive shift to the right, and the transformation of an obscure Polish bishop from Karol Wojtyla to John Paul II was part of this wider transition. The Catholic church had lived through its...