Staff

Dr. Robert Royal, President

Robert Royal is the founder and President of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. and Editor-in-Chief of The Catholic Thing (www.thecatholicthing.org)  His books include: 1492 And All That: Political Manipulations of History, Reinventing the American People: Unity and Diversity Today, The Virgin and the Dynamo: The Use and Abuse of Religion in the Environment Debate, Dante Alighieri in the Spiritual Legacy Series, The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century: A Comprehensive Global History, The Pope’s Army, and The God That Did Not Fail. His most recent book is A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.

Dr. Royal holds a B.A. and M.A. from Brown University and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Catholic University of America. He has taught at Brown University, Rhode Island College, and The Catholic University of America. He received fellowships to study in Italy from the Renaissance Society of America (1977) and as a Fulbright scholar (1978). From 1980 to 1982, he served as editor-in-chief of Prospect magazine in Princeton, New Jersey.

Among the other books he has published are: Jacques Maritain and the Jews, Building a Free Society (with George Weigel), Crisis and Opportunity: U.S. Policy in Central America and the Caribbean (with Mark Falcoff), and, with Virgil Nemoianu, The Hospitable Canon and Play, Literature, Religion: Essays in Cultural Intertextuality. His articles have appeared in numerous scholarly journals and other publications, including First Things, Communio, the Wilson Quarterly, the Catholic Historical Review, Academic Questions, Image: A Journal of Religion and the Arts, The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, National Review, and The American Spectator. He writes and speaks frequently on questions of ethics, culture, religion, and politics, has appeared on various television and radio stations around the United States, and has lectured in twelve foreign countries. Dr. Royal has also translated books and articles from French, Spanish, and Italian; most recently J.-P. Torrell’s Initiation à saint Thomas d’Aquin (Catholic University of America Press, 1996) Roberto Papini’s The Christian Democrat International (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), and Yves Simon’s The Ethiopian Campaign and French Political Thought (University of Notre Dame Press 2009).

Brad Miner, Senior Fellow

Brad Miner is Senior Editor of The Catholic Thing. He was founding Editor-in-Chief of the American Compass book club, a division of Bookspan, a joint venture of Bertelsmann and Time-Warner. His Compass Points blog received recognition in the 2007 Webby Awards. He has held senior editorial positions with both Bantam Books and HarperCollins, and from 1989 until 1992 was Literary Editor of National Review magazine. He has served as president of the Religion Publishing Group.

Mr. Miner was John M. Olin Visiting Professor of the Humanities at Adelphi University, has appeared on many radio and television shows, and has been quoted in articles appearing in The Washington Times, The New York Times, USA Today, Columbia Journalism Review, The Los Angeles Times, Newsmax, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Washington Post, Newsday, and The American Spectator. He is the author of six books, including The Concise Conservative Encyclopedia and The Compleat Gentleman: The Modern Man’s Guide to Chivalry, and Smear Tactics, An audio edition of The Compleat Gentleman is available from Audible.com. He is also co-author of Sons of St. Patrick: A History of the Archbishops of New York, written with George J. Marlin.

Mary Eberstadt, Senior Research Fellow

Mary Tedeschi Eberstadt is Senior Research Fellow at the Faith & Reason Institute. Essayist, novelist, and author of several books of non-fiction, her writing has appeared in magazines including TIME, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, National Review, First Things, The Weekly Standard, and other venues.

Mary Eberstadt grew up in rural, upstate New York and graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University, where she was a four-year Telluride Scholar. Mrs. Eberstadt is married to author and demographer Nicholas Eberstadt.

In 2016, HarperCollins published Eberstadt’s latest book, It’s Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies, which chronicles the rise in discrimination against religious believers in the United States and elsewhere during an era of ascendant secularism. Her previous books include How the West Really Lost God, an intensive study of both historical data and contemporary popular culture, Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution, published in 2012, which examines how the sexual revolution has produced widespread discontent among men and women, and has harmed the weakest members of society. Her first book, Home-Alone America: The Hidden Toll of Day Care, Behavioral Drugs and Other Parent Substitutes, argued that separating children from family members at early ages is linked to childhood problems such as obesity and rising rates of mental and behavioral disorders.

Mrs. Eberstadt served as a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution from 2002-2013. From 1990 to 1998, she was executive editor of National Interest magazine. Between 1985 and 1987, she was a member of the Sate Department’s Policy Planning Staff and was a speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Schultz. She is also the founder of the Kirkpatrick Society, named after her late mentor, U.N. Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick.

Hannah Russo, Business Manager

Hannah is the Business Manager at the Faith & Reason Institute and Managing Editor of The Catholic Thing. Hannah holds a degree in Business Marketing from Franciscan University of Steubenville.

Hannah resides in Northern Virginia with her husband and children.

 

 

 

 

Karen Popp, Assistant Managing Editor