Letter from the Editors, December 2021

Dear Reader,

Thank you for picking up this issue of The Fenwick Review. Life on campus has been somewhat slow lately; as school work piles up and daylight falls away, Holy Cross becomes somewhat less exciting. Is this for better or for worse? Well, we’ll leave that up to you.

In this edition however, we’ve done something we rarely do: respond directly to The Spire, the official student newspaper on campus. Why have we elected to do so, you ask? The topic The Review seems to gravitate to in each of our issues came up: abortion. We see the problem of abortion as a unique — indeed, the preeminent — evil of our contemporary world. This is why one of the few articles we would never publish is one supporting abortion. Because of this issue’s importance, we saw it necessary to provide two seperate perspectives in response. We must be especially mindful of abortion during this season of Advent, as we await the coming of our yet unborn Lord. Otherwise, we offer you a bevy of other articles, spanning from campus events to geopolitics.

As this will be our last issue of the semester, we want to take the opportunity now to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! May this be a time of peace, joy, and love, centered around the birth of our Lord, Jesus Christ. We will keep you and your families in our prayers, and we ask that you keep all of our staff in yours.

Sincerely,

Andrew Buck & John Pietro, Co-Editors-in-Chief

Letter From The Editors, November 2021

Dear Reader,

The Fenwick Review is chugging along. We hoped to release this issue a week earlier, and we had to amend the frequency at which we publish our newsletter (now once a month, down from biweekly). We have, however, received some wonderful feedback on both our previous edition and The Crusader’s Brief. We are also proud to announce that The Fenwick Review received the award for “Best Feature Writing” at this year’s Collegiate Network’s Editors’ Conference. This is against such competition as The Stanford Review, The Dartmouth Review, and Notre Dame’s Irish Rover. So, despite the hiccups, we are excited to get another issue in your hands and another newsletter in your inbox.

On Thursday, November 11, we were fortunate enough to host Richard Reinsch, founding editor of the online conservative journal Law and Liberty. His talk was entitled “The Truth about Religious Freedom.” We would like to thank Mr. Reinsch for coming to speak with us, the Holy Cross Office of Student Involvement for helping us coordinate this event, and especially our donors who made such an event financially feasible. 

Finally, we wish you all a blessed Thanksgiving! We hope to greet you again nearer to Christmas as our semester comes to a close. As always, enjoy your read, and thank you for picking up a copy of The Fenwick Review.

Sincerely,

Andrew Buck and John Pietro

Co-Editors-In-Chief

A Christmas Letter to Our Readers

Dear Reader,

We wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas, whether you are together or apart. Despite the turbulent year, we hope you can spend the time in peace and joy. 

On this day, 2000 years ago, a Light unlike any other was brought into the world: God made flesh. That world was a turbulent one, a dangerous one, and an uncertain one. But it was to this world, fallen and sinful, that the Lord came. We too live in difficult times – albeit of no comparison to the hardships of two millennia ago. This Christmas, let us recognize the Light brought into our world, and let us find strength in the Lord as we navigate the troubles we face daily. May we, then, be grateful for the greatest gift that He has given us: the gift of Himself. 

In the theme of gratitude, we want to take the time and thank all of those who supported and read our work during these unusual times – you are why we continue to publish. With your support, we have been able to continue to fulfill our mission of authoring quality content reflecting the tenets of conservatism and the principles of the Catholic Church.

You can always count on the Fenwick Review to wish you a “Merry Christmas,” regardless of the prevailing political orthodoxy. So once again, from the entire Fenwick Review Staff to you, we sincerely wish a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. May we all celebrate the birth of our Lord in joy and gratitude.

Best wishes,

The Fenwick Review

Letter from the Editors: March/April 2019

Dear Reader,

Thank you for reading the March/April issue of The Fenwick Review. It’s about time that we let it clear the press.

Given that our writers usually have entirely different ideas about what they should cover in the next version of the Review— ergo the “Holy  Cross’ Independent Journal of Opinion”—we most often do not create themed issues. However, after reading through the series of articles on these pages, it seems that there’s a common sentiment floating about. We all are looking back fondly on the past.

Mr. Foley’s article about sacrifice, Mr. Buzzard’s about St. Patrick’s Day, and Dr. Thomas Craig’s article on Holy Cross Athletics all explicitly look backward. They gesture to an older, finer time, where reverence and excellence were virtues held in higher esteem. As for Mr. Pietro’s article? The United States surely would not have dared entertain socialism 70 years ago.  Mr. Brennan’s article begs the question of why, now, so few people have thick skins. Ms. Anderson’s article and Mr. Rosenwinkel’s articles push us to recall a time when Catholicism was not lukewarm.

This issue of The Fenwick Review, thus, has a keen sense for tradition, whether it be our economic policies, athletic excellence, fervency in the Church, and so on. We hearken back to tradition because, in these so chaotic times, we desire it. 

In G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, he quotes: “Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.”  Let us not forget what they have given us, for it is they who brought us here.

Seamus Brennan & Michael Raheb

Co-Editors-in-Chief

Letter from the Editors: February 2019

Dear Reader,

Thank you for picking up the first issue of The Fenwick Review of 2019.  We hope you didn’t mind the wait!  

This year marks the Review’s 30th anniversary.  Three decades ago, our publication’s founders vowed “to publish a journal of opinion” in which they hoped “to provoke intellectual discussion and stimulate ideas.”  Here, in 2019, we hold true to the mission they instituted and aim to advance the values, principles, and ideas they so boldly defended.

In 1989, 30 years ago, The Fenwick Review was founded on the defense of traditional Catholic principles and conservative ideas in order to provide alternatives to the dominant campus ethos.  The contents of this issue hold true to that mission. In the wake of continued campus controversy and student protest, Professor Schaefer of Political Science offers his insights on last December’s ENGAGE Summit and the foundations of liberal education.  Mr. Buzzard and Mr. Rosenwinkel reflect on living the Catholic faith and acting as a man for others, respectively. Mr. Klinker comments on the role of sex in the present-day culture, and Mr. Pietro defends American exceptionalism through historical and contemporary political contexts.

Though there is no doubt that Holy Cross is a different campus than it was 30 years ago when this publication first hit the newsstands, The Fenwick Review and its mission remain imperative and our founders’ vision remains relevant.  We seek the best for Holy Cross and hope you can find something to enjoy, to ponder, or to reflect upon in the coming pages of this issue.

Seamus Brennan & Michael Raheb

Co-Editors-in-Chief

Letter from the Editors: December 2018

Dear Reader,

I hope you don’t mind reading, because this issue will have plenty of it. There are only four pictures among the seven articles. I hope you don’t miss any more.

If you recall, our first issue this year had only three “staff writers” (do note, however, that students in editorial positions also frequently write for the Review). We’ve been blessed to have three new staff writers join our team, and I suspect that more are to follow; some articles are already even set in the docket for our January issue. In other words? We’re going to more than double our writing staff.

It is for that reason that I hope you don’t mind some hefty reading. This issue is packed to the brim, between writers new and old—two first-year students and one sophomore have joined the mix: Mr. Pietro, Mr. Buck, and Ms. George—but quality has in no way been sacrificed. Mr. Pietro’s thorough research, as reflected in the sources at the end of his article “Fooling Ourselves: A Dragon in Disguise”, is a credit to his work’s certain merit. Mr. Buck and Ms. George, who collaborated on “The Summit’s Not It,” graciously gave me several hours out of one night’s evening for a lengthy discussion and session of editing. I hope that all three of these enterprising young students are proud of their work, because I am proud to include them on our team.

Our older writers, moreover, are just as capable as ever. Mr. Smith returns for political commentary, Mr. Rosenwinkel for a decidedly amusing piece of satire, and Mr. Dooley for an enlightening discussion on our motivations and humility. Mr. Buzzard ties up the issue nicely with a literary analysis of A Christmas Carol. Whether I am also a capable writer? Debatable.

By the time you receive this issue, Advent will have already begun. Be sure to use it properly: for excitement, joy, hope and peace as you prepare for Christ’s coming on December 25th. We at the Fenwick Review are sometimes rabble-rousers, so although I encourage you to enjoy all of our squabbling, flamboyancy, and perhaps excessiveness in the coming pages, please make sure to leave time for Advent to be Advent.

When Christmas is over, we’ll still be here, though. I look forward to seeing you then. 

Have a wonderfully merry Christmas,

Michael Raheb

Editor-in-Chief

Letter from the Editors: November 2018

Dear Reader,

We have finally come about to publishing the very first Fenwick Review in a very new year. Much of our writing staff—and our two editors—graduated last year, gone like fluttering leaves in the wind, off to see new places and live new lives. We wish them well, and we miss them.

This Review arrives in your hands during a period of tension. Scandals of sexual abuse have ravaged the Catholic Church like wildfires, and even we, a little campus atop a hill in Worcester, haven’t escaped abuse unscathed. Moreover, Justice Kavanaugh, in a massive victory for the Republican party, has been confirmed to the Supreme Court. The Church is at odds with itself, the government’s parties are at odds with each other. What a time to be alive.

During this semester, I have found less than a few people walking with smiles on their faces. Perhaps we are all worn by the constant battering of negative media, fight after fight, argument after argument: shootings, assaults, names dragged through the mud, lies and deceit circling the whole mess like flies around a dungpile. Many of us are disappointed in each other, or even in ourselves.

This issue of the Review is emblematic, in part, of those disappointments. Our first article dolefully discusses sexual abuse; another article looks back on the sexual revolution with disappointment. Our two satire pieces each also have their own gripes. The other three articles, however, are cheerier in some respects, covering topics such as the rosary, celebration, and Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

To you, dear reader, holding this Review  in your hands—I would like to remind you that despite our struggles, the world still has hope and beauty in it. I would like to think that our work as a newspaper has contributed to that hope, although it has often met with contention on the Holy Cross campus. We are committed to truth, to the virtues and codes found in our Church, and to our writers, who find value in gracing the pages of our little paper with their words.

If you take a quick glance at the photo on the cover, you’ll see the faint glow of the sun behind a forest’s dark limbs. I find it a fitting image for this issue and our current moment in time: amid darkness, light suspended in the distance. Do not forget, in all our society’s turmoil, that the sun is just hiding behind the clouds.

Sincerely,

Michael Raheb

Editor-in-Chief

Letter from the Editors: May 2018

Dear Reader,

We have come, at last, to the end of the year at Holy Cross—another semester, another sequence of months, an arbitrary measurement of elapsed time.  But it is far more than that, as you invariably knew we’d say. It’s the end of a time together, by turns terribly stressful, thrillingly contentious, and wondrously exhilarating. So too this year, for this publication.  A sponsored lecture in Rehm Library, a published interview with a prominent public intellectual, six issues, a substantially expanded readership, a growing list of alumni supporters.  As one of our predecessors put it, “All in all, not a bad run.”

The Fenwick Review has been around for twenty-nine years.  When it was founded, publications like this one had been springing up for a decade across the country. Many of the social changes of the last few years were inconceivable.  Much of that has changed.  Iraq and Afghanistan discredited the neocons; social conservatives have lost on most of the issues they ever cared about; the neoliberal economics of Hayek and Friedman, once conservative bread and butter, now face increasing criticism from the Right, and particularly from the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.  Does a magazine built on this synthesis still have anything credible to say?

We believe we do.  “Traditional Catholic principles and conservative ideas” are perhaps less popular in academia today than they were thirty years ago, but they aren’t any less relevant.  Thirty years ago, the Right was all about freedom. While the contemporary left might claim the banner of liberation, it continues to fundamentally undermine the authentic sense of freedom.  It isn’t merely a political problem, either: the de rigeur understanding of human beings is extremely toxic in this regard.

That is precisely where this magazine becomes important. We’ve taken our stands in defence of life, conscience, and religion.  We’ve published cultural criticism and spiritual reflections. We’ve touched frequently on contemporary politics, particularly on the relationship of freedom and the common good.  All of these resist the identitarian flattening of human beings into acronyms or protest movements. All of them communicate the freedom and the dignity of every human person.  In our lives on this hill and beyond it, there are truths to be discovered, and choices to be made. We have to seek them freely, and make them truly.  We hope that we have sometimes helped to do that.

Petite Veritatem,

Claude Hanley ‘18

William Christ ‘18

Editors in Chief