We Are Not Our Own: Childhood in a Technological Age

By |2022-02-23T10:06:32-06:00April 12th, 2016|Categories: Abortion, Christianity, Communio, Culture, David L. Schindler, Family, Featured, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Pope Benedict XVI, St. John Paul II, Technology|

Childlikeness, as both the beginning and the end of our creaturely way of being, is the key to being effective and realistic in efforts to renew the world, and indeed is the grounds for never-failing hope in these efforts. Liberal culture’s anti-child practices are bound up with a logic of childlessness most basically defined in [...]

Out of the Liquid City

By |2023-07-31T13:44:54-05:00February 14th, 2016|Categories: Beauty, Catholicism, Christianity, Communio, Culture, Featured, Pope Benedict XVI, Religion, Secularism, Stratford Caldecott, Timeless Essays|

During the infamous Brixton Riots of 1981—clashes between the police and the African-Caribbean community in south London—I was driving back to my parents’ house at night and got lost in the fog. I found myself faced with a dramatic scene: the fog illuminated by fire, as the rioters overturned cars and set them alight. I [...]

The Elemental Song of Creation: Genesis, Hildegard, Tolkien

By |2023-02-20T22:32:22-06:00December 8th, 2015|Categories: Christianity, Christopher Morrissey, Communio, Featured, J.R.R. Tolkien, Stratford Caldecott|

If we reconstruct J.R.R. Tolkien’s reading of Genesis from the opening pages of The Silmarillion, then, on Tolkien’s interpretation, only days four through six involve the actualization of material existence, whereas the first three days concern creation in an immaterial realm. Stratford Caldecott notes three correspondences between Genesis and Tolkien’s myth: between heaven and the [...]

The Challenge of Secularization

By |2016-08-03T10:36:23-05:00August 13th, 2015|Categories: Christendom, Christianity, Communio, England, Islam, Morality, Secularism|

Secularisation is far more of a challenge to Christianity in England than is Islam, and yet by seemingly strengthening the case for secularism, the issue of Islam has moved centre-stage. I believe that England, or more widely the United Kingdom, has to decide between three possible responses to the growth of the Islamic community not [...]

Not Neutral: Technology and the “Theology of the Body”

By |2022-04-30T09:34:04-05:00October 29th, 2014|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Communio, Featured, Marriage, St. John Paul II, Technology|

Pope John Paul II’s “theology of the body” is becoming better and better known among ordinary Catholics, many of whom have found in it a way of connecting the central mysteries of the Christian faith—Trinity, Incarnation, and Eucharist—with their marriages, their bearing and rearing of children, and their sexuality. To such Catholics, the theology of [...]

Regensburg, Truth & Appeasement: Benedict XVI as Prophet

By |2023-02-10T18:43:36-06:00September 13th, 2014|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Communio, Pope Benedict XVI, World War II|Tags: |

If a prophet is not without honor save in his own country, a great prophet is not without honor save in the whole world. Pope Benedict XVI bent under that mantle in 2006 when he spoke in Regensburg. His only miscalculation was to assume that civilization might still be civil enough to respect reason. There [...]

When Reagan and Ratzinger Teamed Up on Faith and Hope

By |2023-01-07T10:11:04-06:00September 7th, 2014|Categories: Christianity, Communio, Faith, G.K. Chesterton, Hope, Pope Benedict XVI, Ronald Reagan|

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI almost a year after the June 2004 death of Ronald Reagan. I don’t know if Ratzinger and Reagan ever met, though there’s a chance they did during one of Reagan’s visits to the Vatican to meet with Pope John Paul II, especially his first and most prominent visit, [...]

The Core of Catholic Education: Philosophy of Schooling Is at Stake

By |2016-02-14T16:01:01-06:00June 21st, 2014|Categories: Christianity, Classical Education, Communio, Education, Liberal Learning, Stratford Caldecott|

As the author of two books laying out a new Catholic philosophy of education based on the traditional liberal arts (Beauty in the Word and Beauty for Truth’s Sake), I have mixed feelings about the Common Core. The Common Core grew out of a report on American education called “Ready or Not: Creating a High [...]

Not as the World Gives: The Way of Creative Justice

By |2018-12-04T16:50:30-06:00May 14th, 2014|Categories: Books, Catholicism, Christianity, Communio, Featured, Stratford Caldecott|

In a book on Catholic social doctrine, published just after Easter, I found myself integrating a lifetime’s work on a range of topics, from liturgy to politics, from sex to economics. Not As the World Gives aims to show us the nature of society by showing us ourselves. But that is the biggest reality of [...]

Oncology/Ontology

By |2016-07-17T09:59:55-05:00March 24th, 2014|Categories: Communio, Culture, Featured, Stratford Caldecott|

From my wheelchair I noticed that there was only one letter different between these two words—the word for the study of cancer, and for the study of being. That posed me a challenge. What is this difference? What is cancer, and what is being? Why is there no “Ontology Ward” in my local hospital? Would [...]

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