Depicting the Whole Christ: Von Balthasar & Sacred Architecture

By |2024-03-10T14:44:45-05:00March 10th, 2024|Categories: Architecture, Beauty, Catholicism, Christianity, Communio, Culture, Featured, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Timeless Essays|

Architecture, just like sacred music or art, must fulfill its highest calling, aiding the participant in seeing the glory of God. An architecture that is ordered to fulfill only its human, or even liturgical use, fails its higher purpose. The theological work of twentieth-century theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar has only recently begun to take [...]

Belief and the Public Square

By |2024-02-25T14:13:37-06:00February 25th, 2024|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Communio, David L. Schindler, Essential, Faith, Featured, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Religion, Timeless Essays|Tags: , , , , |

Authentic human creativity offers an image of divine creativity. Its purpose-to bring about a civilization of love to give glory to God-can only be achieved when freedom is properly understood as the received gift by the Son from the Father. For David Schindler this trinitarian economy offers the only model by which any human economy, [...]

Romano Guardini and the Personality of Man

By |2023-12-10T16:53:26-06:00October 14th, 2023|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Communio, Conservatism, Featured, Romano Guardini|

The profound Germano-Italian philosopher and theologian Romano Guardini (1885-1968) remains one of the most unsung heroes of twentieth-century conservatism. His reputation revived a bit during the all-too brief pontificate of Benedict XVI as so much of Ratzinger’s thought came from Guardini, directly and indirectly. But, he and his work should stand much higher than they [...]

The Mystery of Grace

By |2023-10-14T09:55:00-05:00October 1st, 2023|Categories: Communio, Essential, Featured, Romano Guardini|Tags: |

Through your creation, O Lord, goes a voice that reminds us of something that is above everything created. The things and their ordering, earth, sun and stones, seem to be pure reality, but our heart knows that they proceed from your holy freedom, and are gifts that should always be accepted afresh. And so they [...]

Science and Spirit: Beyond the Wasteland

By |2023-09-17T13:49:25-05:00September 17th, 2023|Categories: Christianity, Communio, David L. Schindler, Featured, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Technology, Timeless Essays|Tags: , , , , |

The burden of Theodore Roszak’s “Where the Wasteland Ends” is to explode the myth that the problems attendant upon the technocratic society can be resolved by technology. Where The Wasteland Ends: Politics And Transcendence In Postindustrial Society, by Theodore Roszak (492 pages, Doubleday, 1972) The burden of this book is to explode the myth that [...]

Defining Life, Defining Law

By |2024-03-08T09:30:37-06:00August 20th, 2023|Categories: Abortion, Christianity, Communio, Constitution, Rule of Law, Supreme Court|

When the law reckons with the matter of life, it inevitably reckons with its own foundation and its own essence. When we attempt to define life in law, in other words, we are necessarily, though implicitly, defining law in an analogous sense at the same time. The background assumption of my brief essay is that [...]

Ecology in Light of Integral Human Development

By |2023-07-30T21:45:26-05:00July 30th, 2023|Categories: Caritas in Veritate, Catholicism, Communio, Conservation, David L. Schindler, Environmentalism, Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis, Romano Guardini, St. John Paul II, Timeless Essays|

Every being is good because it is created. To be created is to be loved into existence by God. Every creature is thus good in itself, both because it is loved by God and because, as a participant in this love of God for it, each creature also loves itself. Because all creatures share in [...]

Trinity and Society: Economics & the Search for a “New Way”

By |2023-04-20T16:23:04-05:00April 20th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Communio, Distributism, Economics, Essential, Featured, G.K. Chesterton, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Stratford Caldecott, Timeless Essays|

The logic of individualism may now almost be played out in the West. In the society which we see all around us, people are brought up to think of themselves as free floating social particles, individuals whose only fulfillment lies in choice. The only alternative now to accepting the dissolution of the self is to [...]

The Things That Are Caesar’s: Romano Guardini

By |2023-07-29T21:36:59-05:00March 8th, 2023|Categories: Books, Christianity, Communio, George A. Panichas, Religion, Romano Guardini, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

Romano Guardini reminds us, above all, to render “to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God, the things that are God’s.” His writings help us to recognize the spiritual necessity of not being slaves of the things of the world. His testimony thus pleads with us to disentangle ourselves from the enemies of [...]

Benedict XVI, “Communio,” & the Communion of Saints

By |2023-01-01T10:19:23-06:00January 1st, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Communio, Pope Benedict XVI|

As we recall the legacy of the late Benedict XVI, we would be remiss if we overlooked his theology of the saints as the antidote to the “dictatorship of relativism." One of the central ideas throughout the writings of Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) has been the notion of communio (“communion”), which sees God Himself as [...]

Theologian of the Heart: Benedict XVI

By |2022-12-31T08:33:33-06:00December 31st, 2022|Categories: Books, Communio, Featured, Pope Benedict XVI, Timeless Essays, Tracey Rowland|Tags: , |

The pursuit of the truth as revealed in Jesus Christ, not the building of a philosophical or moral system, has animated the theology of Joseph Ratzinger from the beginning. For this reason, author Tracey Rowland concludes “that even though he is probably one of the most intellectual popes in history, for him Christianity is above [...]

Into the Dark With God: A Christmas Meditation on the Incarnation

By |2023-12-25T10:08:25-06:00December 28th, 2022|Categories: Christianity, Christmas, Communio, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Timeless Essays|

The very finding of a Child wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger—is this not a miracle in itself? Then there is the miracle when a particular mission, hidden in a person’s heart, really reaches its goal, bringing God’s peace and joy where there were nothing but despair and resignation; when someone succeeds in [...]

The Christian Cosmology of C.S. Lewis

By |2023-03-06T23:00:00-06:00November 28th, 2022|Categories: C.S. Lewis, Christianity, Communio, Essential, Featured, Stratford Caldecott, Timeless Essays|

C.S. Lewis described the medieval "cosmos" as “tingling with anthropomorphic life, dancing, a festival not a machine." The modern “universe,” he believed, is devoid of significance, and so we have to give a meaning to our own lives, by willpower if necessary. The old cosmos might not be a very useful map for space travelers, [...]

Beauty: A Necessity, Not a Luxury

By |2023-08-04T09:27:45-05:00November 27th, 2022|Categories: Architecture, Art, Beauty, Books, Catholicism, Christianity, Communio, Essential, Featured, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Language, Pope Benedict XVI, St. John Paul II, Timeless Essays|

“Beauty will save the world.” That remains to be seen. But beauty has saved me, and continues to do so. My experience is that I need saving; it is not a luxury. Just when I am about to succumb to the sadness and living death of nihilism, some piercing ray of beauty breaks open my [...]

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