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In consideratione creaturarum non est vana et peritura curiositas exercenda; sed gradus ad immortalia et semper manentia faciendus.
—St Augustine De vera religione

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Max Arnott

Olavo de Carvalho

Robert Cheeks

Meins G.S. Coetsier

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"So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, O wicked man, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way; he shall die in his iniquity, but you will have saved your life." Ezekiel, chapter 33, verses 7-9

Quoted in Hitler and the Germans, CW 31, p 201.

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Robert_Cheeks_smbw

Book Review by Robert Cheeks

Mysticism and Space: Space and Spatiality in the works of Richard Rolle, The Cloud of Unknowing Author, and Julian of Norwich.

By Carmel Bendon Davis

The Catholic University of America, 2008 Hardbound, 271 pgs.

"Our challenge is to show that human beings are truly involved in activities that transcend the restrictions of space, time, and matter, that we do accomplish things that are spiritual, and that therefore we are spiritual as well as material beings."

Msgr. Robert Sokolowski, Soul and the Transcendence of the Human Person.

"The concept of mysticism," the author of Mysticism and Space, Carmel Bendon Davis, warns us "is not straightforward." Consequently, Ms. Davis provides the essential meaning of the word in her seminal study: Christian mysticism is the product of pseudo-Denis whose work, Theologia Mystica, perceives mysticism as the secret knowledge of God, a definition pregnant with the possibility of Gnostic distortions. That the author is not derailed because of the Gnostic possibilities indicates that her work is neither eristic nor philodoxical, but rather an example of existential consciousness analyzing the revelatory process.

NEW POLITICAL RELIGIONS, OR AN ANALYSIS OF MODERN TERRORISM by Barry Cooper

Reviewed by Fritz Wagner

Barry Cooper's New Political Religions, or an Analysis of Modern Terrorism, (University of Missouri Press, Columbia, 2004). The title puts the reader in mind of Eric Voegelin's Political Religions, which originally appeared in 1938 and dealt with the murderous mass political movements of that era. In this work, Dr. Cooper has brought his understanding of political theory to bear on what he calls "Islamism," that fraction of Muslim society which believes it has a God-given task to bring the world under Islamic control, using murder and suicide as routine instruments for conquest.

One of the epigrams for the volume is from Graham Greene, "They won't believe the world they haven't noticed is like that"- and it was certainly true for this reader! I thought in the years following 9/11 that I had acquired a good grasp of the problems faced by the West and particularly the US, but it soon became evident to me on reading this book that I knew too little.