Links

- From Crux: The Crux 2015 Christmas Book and DVD List. I mention it because one of the books is from the Gabriel Allon series by Daniel Silva - The Confessor. That's the series about the Israeli art restorer/agent that I've often posted about. I mentioned The Confessor in a past post about the Great Synagogue of Rome. Here's what Allen says about the book ...

I spend a lot of time on airplanes, and generally like to indulge a guilty pleasure by reading spy novels. The Gabriel Allon series by Daniel Silva is always in the mix, and “The Confessor” is my absolute favorite because it involves a juicy Vatican conspiracy — confronted, in this case, by an Israeli spy, working in tandem with a reforming pope and his basically agnostic but ferociously loyal priest-secretary. It’s all fantasy, of course, but let me just say this: Silva, a former journalist who was born Catholic but converted to Judaism, deserves an honorary membership card in the Vaticanologist union, because he really did his homework. (Anyone who doesn’t recognize a real Vatican personality in his depiction of the fictional Cardinal Secretary of State Marco Brindisi, for instance, just hasn’t been paying attention.)

- From NPR: The Case Against Wearing Hijab To Support Muslim Women and from the Washington Post" Meet the honor brigade, an organized campaign to silence debate on Islam

- An article by Nick Trakakis at ABC Religion & Ethics: Why I Am Not Orthodox. I had posted about him in 2006.

- In Harper's Magazine: When I Die: An end-of-life doctor faces his own end

- From TIME: The best space photos of 2015