Don Bosco’s character was in keeping with his physique: balance and firmness, but also courage and enthusiasm. He was a legendary figure, a living exemplar of sanctity in action. During one of his visions the ineffable Presence asked him what he desired, and he replied: “Lord, give me souls and keep the rest.” The Church [...]
Chesterton once said, “It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap.” Jerry Seinfeld did the hard work to make his show leap week after week and into history. And twenty-six years after "Seinfeld" ended, [...]
It is always a dangerous and potentially deadly error to consider the enemy of our enemies to be our friend, patting him on the back while he is stabbing us in ours. The truth is that Dr. Harold Bloom is himself a servant of dark forces, which are subtler by far than those politically oriented [...]
“If I were rich I would have many books, and I would pamper myself with bindings bright to the eye and soft to the touch, in paper generously opaque, and type such as men designed when printing was very young. I would dress my gods in leather and gold, and burn candles of worship before [...]
Augustine is accessible and applicable because he is one of us. He suffers from the same temptations and succumbs to those temptations. He falls and does not always get up again, preferring to wallow in the gutter with his lusts and his illicit appetites. And yet, like us, he is restless until he rests in [...]
State-sponsored murder was the primary fact of the twentieth century—not the rise of democracy or the liberation of peoples, as many have been taught, but the devastating horrors of the gulag, the holocaust, and the killing fields. It was in June 1996 that I picked up a book that, for all intents and purposes, changed my [...]
Like love, like gambling, like the other passions that are tangled with the roots of man’s nature, the thirst for an intoxicant has a purpose, but that purpose is subservient to man’s destiny. The Space of Life Between, by Bede Jarrett (174 pages, Cluny Media) I. Amongst all peoples love and wine have been for [...]
Glaucon’s story is part of a well-known political tragedy that swept up many of Plato’s friends and fellow citizens, including Socrates. The evidence for his personal tragedy, however, is deeply embedded in the text. Like a three-dimensional image hidden within a two-dimensional picture, it requires a special adjustment of the eyes to perceive. Perhaps the [...]
Historical novelists can tell us not only about the past, but also about our present in a manner that keeps our interest, and helps us reflect on our own existence as historical beings. This notion is important for our understanding of George Gissing’s great novel, “Veranilda.” When George Gissing died in December 1903, he was [...]
The sharp focus on Mrs. Verhagen gives “The Winged Watchman,” Hilda van Stockum’s novel about a Dutch family during World War II, such power. The close-up tasks of the women are just as heroic as the tasks of the men who often fought to protect their loved ones. Who knew a great war story would [...]
There is no want of faith in fear of death—in fact, it is right to fear it and shrink from it, since death has come into the world through sin. But the fear can gradually be tempered by hope, and reduced as we grow in Christhood and in love for God, because Christ, by surrendering [...]
I rarely have any trouble finding available in the stacks works by and about the major conservative writers whom I esteem. Am I truly the only reader of Kirk, Weaver, and Voegelin in a town with a university of 30,000 students? I often reserve my Sunday afternoons for trips to the local university library. These [...]
We must open our heart to the mystery of love which comes from God, which is given by Him in whom this love is a “theological virtue." It is this mystery in which grace allows us to share. It is by this mystery that faith lives. We must cling to this mystery if we wish [...]
Bradley J. Birzer’s definitive biography is clearly a victory for old-school conservatism and the imagination. Old friends of Kirk and new ones alike will benefit from this work, and hopefully, even optimistically, will do so for generations to come. A few years ago I had the honor and pleasure of visiting Piety Hill, the familial home [...]