In Christifideles Laici (1988), Pope John Paul II exhorts his readers to recognize that "The inviolability of the person, which is a reflection of the absolute inviolability of God, finds its primary and fundamental expression in the inviolability of human life." For this great champion of life, "the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights ... the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture-is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum...

In Adventures in the Book Pages, Edward Short shares his insights into history, literature, music, art, religion, and biography from a refreshingly Catholic standpoint. Here are essays and reviews on Renaissance portraiture, Catholic poetry, the Great War, Europe entre deux guerres, and the Blue Plaques of London. There are also pieces on Ben Jonson, Samuel Johnson, W. M. Thackeray, Gerard Manley Hopkins, G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, Edith Sitwell, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, and Penelope Fitzgerald, as well as Henry V, Henry VIII, John Ruskin, A. W. N. Pugin, Henry Mayhew, Edward VII,...