St. Augustine and J.R.R. Tolkien

By |2024-02-15T20:13:18-06:00February 15th, 2024|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Myth, Senior Contributors, St. Augustine, StAR, Timeless Essays|

As did St. Augustine as the barbarians tore through Rome’s gate on August 24, 410, at midnight, J.R.R. Tolkien looked out over a ruined world: a world on one side controlled by ideologues, and, consequently, a world of the Gulag, the Holocaust camps, the Killing fields, and total war; on the other: a world of [...]

Why We Should Revere Spain

By |2023-07-16T22:52:40-05:00March 27th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Europe, History, Joseph Pearce, StAR, Timeless Essays|

Throughout the centuries Spain has done more than any nation to fight the Long Defeat and, in her heroism, has shown us many fleeting glimpses of the Final Victory. The poet Roy Campbell declared that Spain was “a country to which I owe everything as having saved my soul.”[i]  Received into the Catholic Church in [...]

Education as if Truth Mattered

By |2022-08-25T12:54:22-05:00August 24th, 2022|Categories: C.S. Lewis, Education, Evelyn Waugh, Featured, G.K. Chesterton, Great Books, Joseph Pearce, StAR, T.S. Eliot, Timeless Essays|

If the twenty-first century is to produce more great men and more great books, it will have to restore a true education; and a true education is an education as if truth mattered. The title of this essay, “Education as if Truth Mattered,” is taken from the subtitle of Christopher Derrick’s book, Escape from Scepticism: [...]

Hilaire Belloc and His World

By |2023-07-16T00:49:11-05:00July 15th, 2022|Categories: Books, Christendom, Christianity, Featured, Hilaire Belloc, Joseph Pearce, StAR, Timeless Essays|

A friend of Christendom and of civilization in an age of decadence and barbarism, Hilaire Belloc thundered against the heresies of his age and defied the storms of war and secularism. Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) is not as well-known as he and his talent deserve. From the last years of the reign of Queen Victoria until [...]

“The Act of Killing”: Unquiet Graves and Troubled Consciences

By |2020-01-24T15:16:28-06:00January 30th, 2020|Categories: Communism, Culture, Fascism, Film, History, Politics, StAR|

A few years back, a film, The Act of Killing (2012), ran at a London cinema for 52 weeks. Such a run is unusual for any film: even more so for a documentary feature about Indonesia. The film’s subject matter revolves around one man, Anwar Congo, who is convivial, charming even, and with real screen [...]

Tolkien & Anglo-Saxon England: Protectors of Christendom

By |2020-02-01T12:32:53-06:00November 10th, 2019|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christendom, Christian Humanism, England, History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Myth, Senior Contributors, StAR, Timeless Essays|

J.R.R. Tolkien believed that the Anglo-Saxon world might offer us strength to redeem Christendom. The hero of “The Lord of the Rings,” after all, is an Anglo-Saxon farmer turned citizen-warrior. Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Bradley J. Birzer, as he discusses J.R.R. Tolkien’s christological interpretation of [...]

The Wonder of G.K. Chesterton

By |2020-06-13T21:35:44-05:00October 2nd, 2019|Categories: Christianity, G.K. Chesterton, Imagination, Joseph Pearce, Literature, Senior Contributors, StAR|

What makes Gilbert Keith Chesterton so wonderful is that he is full of wonder. He doesn’t merely see trees, or clouds or sky; he sees glorious creatures charged with what Gerard Manley Hopkins called the grandeur of God. He sees that seeing is itself a miracle. “Give me miraculous eyes to see my eyes,” he [...]

The Witness and Wisdom of C.S. Lewis

By |2019-09-28T09:49:34-05:00September 4th, 2019|Categories: C.S. Lewis, Christian Humanism, Christianity, Fiction, Joseph Pearce, Literature, Philosophy, Senior Contributors, StAR|

The great fruit of C.S. Lewis’s clarity is that he shows his readers that the great truths are knowable through the application of pure and simple common sense. He makes the truth seem so obvious and so inescapable that we feel that we must always have known it, at least subconsciously. Some time ago, during [...]

American Literature and the Catholic Faith

By |2019-09-28T09:49:38-05:00March 30th, 2019|Categories: Christianity, Joseph Pearce, Literature, Senior Contributors, StAR|

It’s difficult to know where to start or finish in any discussion of the connection between American literature and the Catholic Faith. The whole topic is fraught with complexity, as is the relationship between the American nation and the Catholic Faith, or American history and the Catholic Faith. There are few American writers who are [...]

“Stalker”: The Search for Faith Amidst Desolation

By |2023-08-17T18:59:20-05:00February 28th, 2019|Categories: Christianity, Culture, Film, Russia, St. John Paul II, StAR|

Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker is about a man who leads others, however obliquely, and despite obstacles, both external and internal, to faith. Faith is faith. Without it, man is deprived of any spiritual roots. He is like a blind man. Just more than thirty years ago, on 26 April 1986, a nuclear disaster occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear [...]

True Love: Passionate Reason versus Romantic Feeling

By |2019-09-28T09:49:44-05:00February 13th, 2019|Categories: Caritas in Veritate, Christian Living, Christianity, Community, Compassion, Heroism, Joseph Pearce, Love, Senior Contributors, StAR, Wisdom|

Oh, love to some is like a cloud, To some as strong as steel, For some a way of living, For some a way to feel, And some say love is holding on And some say letting go, And some say love is everything And some say they don’t know.   John Denver (Perhaps Love) [...]

The Faith and the South

By |2022-07-29T14:52:20-05:00February 8th, 2019|Categories: American Founding, Catholicism, Christianity, History, Joseph Pearce, Religion, Senior Contributors, South, StAR|

When we think of “the faith and the South” we tend to think of Protestantism in general, and perhaps the Southern Baptists in particular, especially in terms of the so-called Bible Belt. There is, however, much more to the South than the Protestant evangelical or fundamentalist culture that has made its presence felt, socially and [...]

Did John Paul II Change the Course of Irish History?

By |2021-03-16T00:59:59-05:00January 26th, 2019|Categories: Catholicism, Film, Government, Ireland, Politics, St. John Paul II, StAR, War|

Did the speech made by Pope John Paul II at Drogheda during his visit to Ireland in 1979 change the course of Irish history? This is the contention of a new documentary John Paul II in Ireland: A Plea for Peace, written and directed by David Naglieri. The originality of the film’s premise lies in [...]

“Dirty Harry”: The Rage of the Anti-Hero

By |2021-11-21T09:15:51-06:00January 4th, 2019|Categories: Conservatism, Culture, Film, StAR, Television|

Clint Eastwood has perhaps always been more libertarian than conservative, his character Harry Callaghan more anti-hero than hero. Still, for a brief moment in 1971, when cinema seemed to be dominated by the Left, Mr. Eastwood and his collaborators in “Dirty Harry” reminded Hollywood of a different viewpoint and another audience. In December 1971, Dirty [...]

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