I only met the late, great scientist-philosopher Father Jaki once. It was at a Chesterton Conference at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, at which both of us were speaking. I had breakfast with him and recall feeling a little apprehensive. He had a reputation for being somewhat abrasive and for not [...]
Ever since I arrived at Cambridge as a student in 1964 and encountered a tribe of full-grown women wearing puffed sleeves, clutching teddies, and babbling excitedly about the doings of hobbits, it has been my nightmare that J.R.R. Tolkien would turn out to be the most influential writer of the twentieth century. The bad dream [...]
Were one to conduct a survey of modern-day Americans, taken at random, it is likely that not one in a hundred would have heard of the poet, Richard Crashaw. Were one to cross the Atlantic and conduct a similar experiment with modern-day Englishmen, it is likely that the result would be the same. This neglect [...]
Blessed John Henry Newman wrote that Shakespeare had “so little of a Protestant about him that Catholics have been able, without extravagance, to claim him as their own.”[1] Hilaire Belloc, echoing Newman, insisted that “the plays of Shakespeare were written by a man plainly Catholic in habit of mind.”[2] G.K. Chesterton, reaching the same conclusion, [...]
No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. – Matthew 6:24 One of the biggest and most dangerous temptations that Christians face is the addiction to comfort. Our desire for comfort and [...]
Like all nations, France is an enigma. Admired by Hilaire Belloc for being the eldest daughter of the Church, she is also the harlot who sacrificed her own sons and daughters on the anti-Christian altars of secularist revolution. She has produced great sinners and even greater saints. Legend traces the roots of Christianity in France [...]
Let’s begin our discussion of faith and fiction by playing devil’s advocate, or, at least, by giving the devil his due. It cannot be denied that the devil has had great success in convincing many people that faith and fiction are synonymous. In our materialistic age, many believe that faith in God is no more [...]
Theologically we have passed from Christian orthodoxy, via heresy, to hedonism. Such “change” is merely the falling into error. As such, Geoffrey Chaucer sees reality whereas most of our contemporaries do not. Reality has not changed, nor is it subject to so-called “democracy” any more than it is subject to time. Plus ça change, plus [...]
When I arrived in the United States, four days before the 9-11 attacks fourteen years ago, I was woefully ignorant of American literature. I had read very little and, it must be said, had little desire to read much more. In fact, it must also be said and, yes, confessed, that I had an ingrained [...]
We’re all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars. —Oscar Wilde In July, The Imaginative Conservative celebrated its fifth anniversary. “The first five years have been a journey of words, ideas, art, music, wit, and wonder,” wrote W. Winston Elliott III, The Imaginative Conservative’s editor-in-chief. “Let the adventure continue.” Although I [...]
Out of the nightmare of the Somme came a sickly scholar who would gather up the tragedy of the trenches and turn it into the unexpected literary triumph of the century. Despite the derision of the academics, J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece continues to be hailed as the most popular book of the twentieth century and Tolkien [...]
When magicians are omnipotent there is no magic. Heroes need a flaw and the chance to fall or there is no story. Complete plenty eliminates desire, and when everything is visible imagination dies. So I mused on exiting the cinema with my children after watching The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. On the release of [...]
As an acting student I once had to take part in a scene in which all of us wore masks that were drawn by random out of a box. We spent a few moments ‘alone with our mask’ studying it and trying to understand it. We then put on the masks and silently acted out [...]
Ruth was one of those people about whom C.S.Lewis quipped “She was always living for others—and you could tell the “others” by their hunted look. “Just as nice as could be,” Ruth was often as nasty as could be. Ruth was a little tyrant because she believed her mission in life was to be nice [...]