I started out for Florence in the morning in a state of feverish excitement, and the recollection of the sights of that day makes it difficult to write even now. We drove down the hill from San Casciano to the Greve valley with a sense of overwhelming tragedy. The destruction of Florence seemed the end [...]
HPIM0645.JPG Tacitus was one of the most cited of all historians in Colonial North America. The colonists thought the world of him, preferring Locke only slightly more.[1] For example, “Josiah Quincy, Sr., was an omnivorous reader of historical literature that praised liberty, and he bequeathed to his son, ‘Algernon Sidney’s works, --John Locke’s [...]
In the drama of the two brothers and the loving Father the heart of the Gospel is laid open before us. Human freedom and divine love are here. Human sinfulness in two of its more dramatic forms—dissipation and contemptuous pride—are on view. We are warned about the reality of sin and brought face to face [...]
Turning the popular negative connotation of “orthodoxy” on its head, G.K. Chesterton argues that orthodoxy is anything but dull and musty, but on the contrary exciting and adventuresome. In 1952, C.S. Lewis did a great service to the world in producing Mere Christianity, his account of the fundamentals of Christian belief for a popular audience. It [...]
What kind of education would enable a child to progress in the rational understanding of the world without losing his poetic and artistic appreciation of it? Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education by Stratford Caldecott (178 pages, Angelico Press, 2012) Stratford Caldecott’s Beauty in the Word is like no book in the genre of [...]
David Horowitz has been an unrelenting fighter and a happy warrior, and has had his fair share of tribulations. But never has he succumbed to a sense of victimhood. There were always too many good people to appreciate, and when he was young, a world to save, and as he grew older and wiser, warnings [...]
In “Shop Class as Soulcraft,” Matthew B. Crawford tells a story of diminishment, outlining how we went from a nation of independent tradesmen, farmers, and shop keepers to cubicle dwellers. I am not a fan of Ask This Old House, the spin-off of the PBS home improvement program, This Old House. Formerly the companion series to [...]
Timothy Carney’s "Alienated America" tackles a crucial question that too few policymakers and news commentators even bother asking anymore: What is at the root of America’s contemporary cultural and social malaise? The short answer, according to Mr. Carney, is the deterioration of civil society. Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Other Places Collapse, by [...]
When purification is complete mystics enter immediately into the Mystical Marriage with Christ, often called the Transforming Union. It is then that for the first time they are able to experience the continual contemplation of God that Jesus experienced at every moment of his life on earth. When I was a small boy, I used [...]
Robert Hugh Benson's "The King’s Achievement" does what good historical fiction should do: it renders a complex historical situation justly and it brings characters to life in a story that is interesting for its own sake. On October 31, 1904, Robert Hugh Benson wrote his mother that he had just finished his novel on Henry [...]
Propelled into Supreme Command, and without ever having commanded in battle, Dwight Eisenhower was put into an almost impossible situation, having to meet the demands of his battlefield subordinates while satisfying the conflicting expectations and orders of his masters, both military and political. Eisenhower at War, 1943-1945, by David Eisenhower (977 pages, Random House, 1986). [...]
In his excellent memoir, Georgetown Law Center Professor Randy Barnett reveals what he has long maintained: “There will never come a time when our liberty is permanently secured, but there may well come a time when our liberty is permanently lost.” A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist, by Randy Barnett (635 [...]
Brigid prevailed powerfully with the heathen because she was as human as the heathen. That is to say, she never ignored those roots of our being that are common to all humanity. One of the secrets of Patrick’s outstanding success as a missionary was his masterly solution of that evangelizing difficulty called the “adaptation” problem. [...]
For the vast majority of people the night of purification continues for their lifetime on earth. But the truth is that our final destination is union with God, in, with and through Christ, when what happened to him on Mount Tabor will begin to happen to us. The great Franciscan theologian Blessed John Duns Scotus [...]