Political correctness is philosophical nonsense. What we need is Justice not just Equality, Moral Responsibility not just Freedom, Intelligence not just Reason, and Charity not just Niceness or Fraternity—even if these don’t sound so good on a banner. Political correctness identifies a syndrome we all recognize, but is hard to define. It can be best [...]
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Stratford Caldecott as he considers the divine nature of giving as explained by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher My topic is a theological appreciation of the notion of “gift”, and how this throws light on what something is, which [...]
The world may ultimately be broken down, not into atoms or elements or quanta of energy, but into something like “pixels” or units of information. These build up into the impressions of things that are the objects of our consciousness, constituting the other half of reality… Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our [...]
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Stratford Caldecott in coming out of the liquid city, and embracing the order of love and beauty. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher During the infamous Brixton Riots of 1981—clashes between the police and the African-Caribbean community in south London—I was driving back to [...]
(Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series, affords our readers the opportunity to join Professor Stratford Caldecott as he goes beyond the artistic elements of comics and marvels at the questions begged by their narration—questions concerning the meaning of life and the relationship between man and technology. —Alyssa M. Barnes, Editorial Assistant) The imagination of the child [...]
The field of “Tolkien studies” continues to evolve. The book based on the Exeter College conference, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: Sources of Inspiration, is still available and remains one of the most interesting collections of academic essays on this topic. The journal of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College, VII, has for thirty years [...]
This is a remarkable, indeed a staggering book. Each of the four sections, on G. K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, Christopher Dawson, and David Jones, taken alone, would have made it worthwhile. Taken together, they offer an illuminating analysis of the vigorous Catholic revival that took place in Britain during the early and middle years of [...]
It struck me that the key to the Bible is surely to be found at its very heart, in the center that holds all things together. The actual center turns out to be rather surprising. The center of the Bible is the Song of Songs. A rough count, either by page number or by thumb, [...]
Secular Franciscanism offers a world of individualism, but what opens up before us is a new secularism in which a figure like St. Francis enables people around him to think about the potential of human existence in a new way. Francis of Assisi rapidly became the most universally popular of Christian saints, canonized only two [...]
As the author of two books laying out a new Catholic philosophy of education based on the traditional liberal arts (Beauty in the Word and Beauty for Truth’s Sake), I have mixed feelings about the Common Core. The Common Core grew out of a report on American education called “Ready or Not: Creating a High [...]
“I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one [...]
Why can’t we all live forever? It seems a terrible flaw in the fabric of the world—that death haunts us from the moment we are born, injecting a note of tragedy into everything. And yet how could it be otherwise, if reproduction is equally a part of the fabric of space-time? An image of the [...]
In a book on Catholic social doctrine, published just after Easter, I found myself integrating a lifetime’s work on a range of topics, from liturgy to politics, from sex to economics. Not As the World Gives aims to show us the nature of society by showing us ourselves. But that is the biggest reality of [...]
From my wheelchair I noticed that there was only one letter different between these two words—the word for the study of cancer, and for the study of being. That posed me a challenge. What is this difference? What is cancer, and what is being? Why is there no “Ontology Ward” in my local hospital? Would [...]