Visitors to this site will be excited to learn of the launch of a new Catholic cultural journal, The Roman Catholic Arts Review. Edited by the poet William Baer of the Southwell Institute and by Daniel Varholy of Corpus Christ Watershed, the first issue is filled to the brim with the work of some of the finest Catholic writers around today. Some of the highlights are as follows: Poetry by Peter Kreeft, Joseph Bottum, Les Murray and the late Ralph McInerny; a new translation by Dana Gioia of “Saint Bernard’s Hymn of Praise to the Virgin Mary” from Dante’s Divine Comedy; and a short story by Shusaku Endo. Articles on a variety of cultural topics from a Catholic perspective include Piers Paul Read on the Catholic Novelist in a Secular Society and Fr. George W. Rutler on the Sacred Rhetoric of Ronald Knox. I’m pleased to see an article on Dante by Henry Russell, my old friend and colleague at Ave Maria College in Michigan, and an article on The Sound of Music by Kevin O’Brien, StAR feature writer and regular blogger on this site. I’ve also contributed an article entitled “Heresy and Orthodoxy in Greene’s The Power and the Glory”.

For information on how to obtain a copy of this exciting new journal, you can phone 361-299-6334. The journal’s website, www.romancatholicartsreview.org, should be up and running in a few weeks.