In a world and at a time when men have discarded the idea of intellectual truth, it is through the soul and in the imagination that they can, and must, be reached. In a recent address to the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, Cardinal Raymond Burke called for a return to Summorum Pontificum and greater access [...]
Why, one wonders, was Hilaire Belloc so wrong about World War One when he was so right about so many other things? The trouble with satire is that it is topical. It is a child of its time. It is similar to a fad or a fashion. It is very up to date. And the [...]
The astonishing appeal of Tolkien’s works to the millions upon millions of readers in the 20th and 21st centuries, joined today by millions upon millions of filmgoers, is evidence that a deep need and thirst for mythical imagery, religious values, and allegories of Good still characterize our fellow human beings. Virgil Nemoianu I [...]
Hilaire Belloc’s final words of wisdom might enable us to become truly oriented, taking the right path at the right pace to the right place. How do we get to heaven? The answer, it seems, is on foot. Hilaire Belloc was a man of many talents and a man of many parts. He wrote poetry [...]
Like Mr. Chesterton, it would never have occurred to St. Augustine to assign blame for the world’s problems to anyone other than himself. Around the turn of the last century, a prominent London newspaper called The World put the following question to its readers, offering a prize for the best possible answer: “What’s wrong with the world?” Not [...]
Turning the popular negative connotation of “orthodoxy” on its head, G.K. Chesterton argues that orthodoxy is anything but dull and musty, but on the contrary exciting and adventuresome. In 1952, C.S. Lewis did a great service to the world in producing Mere Christianity, his account of the fundamentals of Christian belief for a popular audience. It [...]
Though she was a far greater novelist than G.K. Chesterton, Sigrid Undset's apologetic essays were certainly Chestertonian. And she loved his work. The story is that she once slammed "The Everlasting Man" on an editor’s desk, declaiming: “This is the best book ever written. It has to be translated into Norwegian!” 2024 was a year [...]
Through Ben Reinhard’s book, readers can recognize more deeply the beautiful power of Tolkien’s enchantment and come to treasure it even more. The High Hallow: Tolkien’s Liturgical Imagination, by Ben Reinhard (184 pages, Emmaus Road Publishing, 2025) The title of Ben Reinhard’s book might lead one to suppose it is another specialty entry in the [...]
What was it that this non-expert, the funny fat man, had to say? Why did his works become for many a sort of bible? How was it that an artist-turned-journalist was accepted as the idea man as well as the entertainer of people? The people who now know G.K. Chesterton most commonly know that physically [...]
Must Artificial Intelligence open the door to "that hideous strength" described by C.S Lewis? Time will tell, though I suspect the answer to the juggernaut that is Artificial Intelligence may well be the Babel scenario. In recent online postings, writer Rod Dreher has been commenting on various predictions of an apocalypse caused by Artificial Intelligence. [...]
It is the virtues—through God’s grace—that keep us on the straight and narrow path of morality, dignity, and freedom. And J.R.R. Tolkien, arguably the greatest mythmaker of our era, illustrated seven of these virtues in his books about the history of Middle Earth. To the headmaster, administration, faculty, parents, and, especially, to the Ascent Classical [...]
G.K. Chesterton once said, “The opposite of employment is not unemployment, but independence.” Employment, or work, is activity done for some utilitarian end. So, when he says the opposite of employment is independence, he is saying that true independence (or freedom) involves doing things for their own sake. Things done for their own sake he [...]
According to J.R.R. Tolkien, fairy stories offer recovery, escape and consolation from the sickness, confinement and hopelessness of this world of wickedness. They provide not an escape from reality but an escape to reality. It is an escape from the world of false philosophies and fake realities, rooted in Pride. I believe in fairytales. Take [...]
Hoffman Nickerson and a coterie of essayists in the 1920s and 1930s comprised the “Old Right,” a loose confederation of thinkers and writers animated by anti-modernism, suspicion of democracy, and worries over the debasement of Western culture. In 1934, the cartoonist David Low created the cartoon character of “Colonel Blimp,” an exaggerated caricature of older [...]