The current issue of HUMANUM, the freely available online journal of the Pope John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washington, DC (from the Institute’s Center for Pastoral and Cultural Research) is devoted to the crisis of fatherhood in our culture. It contains articles and book reviews devoted to the literature [...]
“If there be one thing more than another which is true of genuine democracy, it is that genuine democracy is opposed to the rule of the mob. For genuine democracy is based fundamentally on the existence of the citizen, and the best definition of a mob is a body of a thousand men in which [...]
My topic is a theological appreciation of the notion of “gift”, and how this throws light on what something is, which to our usual way of thinking would seem to be a matter for philosophy or science rather than theology. The sense of being as “gift” and ourselves as primarily “receivers” of this gift of existence, which carries [...]
On both sides of the Atlantic, we are witnessing a concerted attack on Christianity and on the institution that the Church deems the fundamental cell of society, namely the family founded on the marriage of a man and a woman. In the US, Archbishop Chaput and other bishops have reacted strongly to the “contraception mandate”–the plans of the [...]
I love it when New Scientist tackles the big questions. This week it is “What is Reality?” There is a new humility in science, it seems. Many scientists will now admit that we just don’t know the answer to the question. Scientific Reductionism is no longer convincing. You can examine ever smaller components of the material [...]
This month, fans around the world will flock to the cinema to watch the first of three installments of Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Hobbit—the “prequel” to the award-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy that was also released in three parts between 2001 and 2003 (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will be released in U.S. theaters Dec. [...]
The title of Gregory Wolfe’s excellent collection of essays, Beauty Will Save the World, is based on a much-quoted line from Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. In its context it appears only in indirect speech, being attributed by one of the other characters to the “Idiot” of the title, Prince Myshkin. Thus in its original context its [...]
The Silver Surfer was one of Jack Kirby’s inventions for Stan Lee's Marvel Comics, a silver-skinned alien on a flying surfboard endowed with the “Power Cosmic” (the ability to play around with–reshape and transform–matter and energy). This meant he could generate really big explosions if needed, and was basically much more powerful than most other [...]
[My recent book, Beauty in the Word, a sequel to Beauty for Truth’s Sake, is quite dense and complicated, so I thought it would be helpful to readers if I produced a “study guide”. So, in a series of posts, I look at some of the key themes and ideas in the book.] IV. The Mother of [...]
The Spiral Curriculum. The liberal arts, of course, are not everything. They were not the whole of ancient education either. For Plato a rounded education would begin with “gymnastics”, meaning physical education and training in various kinds of skills, and “music”, meaning all kinds of mental and artistic training. In the Laws (795e) he describes these as physical [...]
[My recent book, Beauty in the Word, a sequel to Beauty for Truth’s Sake, is quite dense and complicated, so I thought it would be helpful to readers if I produced a “study guide”. So, in a series of posts, I look at some of the key themes and ideas in the book.] II. The Transcendentals [...]
My recent book, Beauty in the Word, a sequel to Beauty for Truth’s Sake, is quite dense and complicated, so I thought it would be helpful to readers if I produced a “study guide”. So, in a series of occasional posts, I intend to look at some of the key themes and ideas in the book. [...]
The massacre at a cinema in Colorado where audiences were enjoying The Dark Knight Rises—the culmination of Christopher Nolan’s Batman movie trilogy—seems to have provoked only a feeble discussion of gun control that is going nowhere, and very little on the showing of extreme violence in movies. The contrast with an earlier superhero film [...]
In its modern sense, the concept of human rights could be said to be alien to the Islamic tradition. That is because the modern doctrine of rights is an invention of the European Enlightenment. It was an attempt to base the humane social order on reason rather than revelation. Unfortunately the secular foundations of the [...]