Eric Forsbergh writes with insight, compassion, and humor, as he describes in well-honed vignettes the human condition, anchored in our DNA: love, identity, sex, families, babies, war, and death, as we go about our multifaceted lives, making music, solving crimes, surfing the internet, and coping with aging parents as we face our own mortality. This [...]
Peter Giersch's "Talking of Michelangelo" is an account of his trip to a French monastery to plunge into a week-long Ignatian retreat. But who wants to read about the inner musings of someone’s religious retreat? Happily, the most likely answer is: You do. Peter Giersch has been a French teacher, a catechist, a business entrepreneur [...]
The truth is that philosophy is not the apanage of the few. All may be equipped with the science of living, and one cannot be so equipped without a right, if inadequate, knowledge of the nature of things—at least, that is, of their nature as affecting human conduct. One who knows the ten commandments and [...]
At the heart of Alexis de Tocqueville’s thought lies the “restless mind”—a mind that sees the essence of humanity in the realization that each of us “dies alone” and that life is but a fleeting moment hedged in between the abysses of the pre-born and the dead. The Restless Mind: Alexis de Tocqueville on the [...]
The sacrifice of Christ was totally effective. It could not be otherwise, given that He Who offered it was God. But it is important to grasp what it effected. Whatever it was meant to effect, it did effect. But what was it? At the moment of His death on Calvary, Christ Our Lord said, “It [...]
Guiding the reader through the seven-week Easter season, Laura Bedingfeld's "Arise" offers daily meditations from Sacred Scripture, showing how the theme of resurrection is woven through the great saga of salvation history from the beginning. There are plenty of devotional aids produced for the penitential seasons of Advent and Lent, but not enough for the [...]
Glenn W. Olsen’s "The Turn to Transcendence" is a must-read for us who desire to topple the dictatorship of relativism and culture of death, and replace it with the only alternative: a civilization of love turned to the Face of Transcendence revealed in Jesus Christ. The Turn to Transcendence: The Role of Religion in the [...]
The Rhine River was the line of no return—once the paratroopers of the 17th Airborne crossed it, they’d be over enemy territory. Some pretended to sleep while others smoked or just stared into space. No one spoke. The roar of the engines and the rattling of the airframe made conversation impossible, which was just fine. [...]
Paul Kingsnorth believes that the Machine Age has replaced the four P's of traditional culture (the past, the people, place, and prayer) with four S's: science, self, sex, and the screen. Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity, by Paul Kingsnorth. (348 pages, Random House, 2025) Paul Kingsnorth is right about much, and he [...]
From the Greek dramatists to Joyce and Kazantzakis, the character of Odysseus has continued to fascinate. Robert Fagles has done such a superb job in his translation of “The Odyssey” that perhaps not since Homer has this epic hero seemed both so grand and so human. The Odyssey, by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles; introduction [...]
Whatever a person’s place in life, Saint Benedict offers a “little Rule for beginners.” The principles of the spiritual life which he sets down put us down firmly in life right where we are. By paralleling family and monastery, today’s reader can glean simple yet practical wisdom for, as well as extraordinary insight into, the [...]
Author's Note: This essay is dedicated to the memory of Barbara J. Elliott, my friend and colleague at Houston Christian University. Her academic and spiritual mentorship of my daughter Anastasia led, in part, to her decision to, like Barbara and Peter Kreeft before her, cross the Tiber to Rome. The Mirror, the Mask & the [...]
At Easter in the year 432, in the village of Slane, Ireland, Saint Patrick declared: “There is no better day for my task. I will announce my mission by lighting the Paschal Fire at this place on Easter Eve!” One day in Lent, a boat sailed up the winding reaches of the Boyne, past the [...]
Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. —from [...]