The romanticism in J.R.R. Tolkien’s great saga was inspired partly by the actions of King Jan Sobieski during the Battle of Vienna in 1683, when Christian Europe stemmed the advance of militant Islam. A minor observation in a recent essay began a series of connections that will please Catholics, conservatives, history hounds, and J.R.R. Tolkien [...]
The same dynamic on display in Shakespeare's "Othello" plays out within the human heart. There is an inner Iago who lies to us, and we want to believe that liar and believe that he is honest and loves us. Do we swallow his lies, or challenge his deception with the astringent face-splash of truth? The [...]
Beneath the politics, the power plays, and the sibling rivalry, darker currents are running in Shakespeare's plays. In showing these dark forces murmuring below the surface, was Shakespeare also hinting at the rumors of occult dabblings in the Tudor and Jacobean courts? Imaginative Conservative contributor Joseph Pearce has produced, with Ignatius Press, a series of [...]
What is at the heart of the success story of the World Villages for Children? Not just a school, not just vocational training, but the Catholic faith. The joy, hope, and faith of the young Sisters of Mary is infectious. The Catholic faith teaches that, with God’s help, we can change—change ourselves, change our families, [...]
We certainly value the great Catholic art of past generations, but we believe the greatest art, the greatest liturgy the Catholic Church has ever produced is yet to come, and we are pro-active in commissioning new liturgical music, poetry, and writing. Founded in 2013 by San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, the Benedict XVI Institute works [...]
I think a niche market remains for Catholic fiction, but it is more likely to be fiction that confirms and consolidates the Catholic worldview: stories with Catholic heroes who challenge and subvert the secular order and suffer for it. American murder mysteries invariably involve a grubby gumshoe working out of a beat-up office with a [...]
St. Benedict’s civilized communities remind us that personal virtue is vital for a civilisation of decency, order, and peaceful prosperity. A Christian needs to listen to God, listen to the Scriptures, listen to the Church and listen to the Holy Spirit within us. Then comes action. In the summer of 1987 I had three months [...]
The reconstructed Globe theater is a masterpiece, a beautiful dream-come-true and a wonderful contribution to the universal Shakespeare industry. If only the productions of the Bard’s plays were as authentic as the theater in which they are performed, instead of being the puerile pastiches that their producers foist upon us. It was a glorious June [...]
Poetry and prayer provide something artificial intelligence can never produce—the vital connection between the reality of the physical world and the greater reality of the unseen world. A poem, like a prayer, is the human soul reaching out with words to the wordless. Our middle son explained how artificial intelligence could help him work as [...]
In his day, Harry Sylvester was viewed as an important Catholic literary voice—a fine writer and a sharp observer, whose description is often precise, poetic, and powerful. But because he focused on contemporary cultural and social concerns instead of the faith itself, he automatically dated his work and destined it to be forgotten. Helping in [...]
Let us sneak around in sneakers and slip into our slippers after a busy day, but let us wear dignified and unostentatious shoes for those times when life demands that we be dignified and unostentatious. I was serving as a Housemaster in an English boarding school when I finally learned the full importance of shoes. [...]
All the immortal myths, sagas, and fairytales we locate in the world of make-believe are retold in the Bible. Likewise with our school's recent production of "The Sound of Music," whose Cinderella story of the pure maid who hears a call from God echoes unconsciously into their lives in a classical Catholic academy. The [...]
A satirical comedy opens our eyes to ourselves and our society, and in laughing at our foibles, foolishness, and failures, we will also see the serious side, the dangerous implications of our idiocy. In Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, the character Betty Higden compliments her child Sloppy who reads the newspaper to her. She says, [...]
Joseph Pearce's "The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful" is a perfect textbook for history classes in Catholic schools, homeschoolers, and anyone concerned to transmit an overview of Catholic history and culture. The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: History in Three Dimensions, by Joseph Pearce (300 pages, Ignatius Press, 2023) The best way to [...]