Superficially, Sohrab Ahmari and I would seem to have very little in common, and yet, in our respective journeys, we had discovered an essential bond that transcends and supersedes every accident of birth. In discovering the true Home of Man, we had discovered the true brotherhood of men. I’ve recently had the surprising pleasure [...]
The renewal of Catholic literature is happening before our very eyes through the efforts of many very good Catholic writers. The problem is that our eyes are closed. We do not see the glorious fruit of this literary revival because we are not looking for it. I am presently in the midst of reading [...]
We live in a mad, mad world where anything goes and many things have gone. One of the things that appears to have gone is a sense of sanity. Take, for instance, a recent essay in The Atlantic which claims to show that William Shakespeare was in fact a woman.[*] The essay itself, which was [...]
G.K. Chesterton’s ideas concerning government intervention in the economy have led some to believe that he may have been a socialist. They argue that the political creed of distributism, which Chesterton advocated, would involve the coercive redistribution of wealth. But are these critics right in their characterization of Chesterton’s ideas? One of the weirdest [...]
There is no doubt that “Tolkien” is a good film with an adroitly crafted storyline, bereft, thankfully, of the poisonous wormtongued agenda that I feared it would have. I have a confession to make. Indeed, I need to make an apology. A few weeks ago, I wrote an essay entitled “Wormtongue’s Revenge”, in which [...]
Europe has a suicidal tendency to ignore the problem underlying its decay: a lack of faith and families. But perhaps, in light of recent legislation in Poland and Hungary rooted in faith and family and the future, perhaps we may be seeing the sun rising in Europe’s East, even as we see it setting [...]
In every generation, there are always those who shun the darkness to follow the light. It is these humble souls with whom I am blessed to worship every Sunday. Through the glory of God, the light shines in the darkness as it has ever done, and still the darkness does not comprehend it. Et [...]
With eyes wide open to the degradation we see all around us, we know that things are rotten in the modern world. Who can deny it? And yet there are more Christians in the world today than there have ever been in the past. The Church is not dead… Today’s offering in our Timeless [...]
J.R.R. Tolkien insisted that fairy stories hold up a mirror to man. They show us who we are. They also show us who we are called to be. In this sense, The Lord of the Rings conforms to reality much more clearly and starkly than any works of literary relativism. I am a great admirer [...]
Following the recent attack on a mosque in New Zealand by a white supremacist terrorist, I was asked by a national TV network in the UK to appear on a live show to give my perspective as a former white supremacist. (I served two prison sentences for “inciting racial hatred” back in the 1980s.) [...]
Editor’s Note: Exclusive to The Imaginative Conservative, this essay is a chapter on Allessandro Manzoni from Joseph Pearce’s forthcoming book, Literature: What Every Catholic Should Know. If the great masterpiece of Italian literature, Dante’s Divine Comedy, could realistically be acclaimed as the greatest poem ever written, the other great masterpiece of Italian literature, The Betrothed (I [...]
Going to the theatre is not a means of escaping from the “real world” and all its problems; nor is it a purely passive activity, or merely recreational, as in watching a ball game. Or at least it needn’t be, and sometimes shouldn’t be. Great drama—great art—can edify. It can enlighten; it can lift us [...]
It’s difficult to know where to start or finish in any discussion of the connection between American literature and the Catholic Faith. The whole topic is fraught with complexity, as is the relationship between the American nation and the Catholic Faith, or American history and the Catholic Faith. There are few American writers who [...]
God suffers evil, in both senses of the word. He allows it in his sufferance and defeats it in his suffering. His eternal will is accomplished in the sufferance and suffering of the Cross, as he tells us in the words he himself utters from the Cross itself. We live in a world in [...]