Principles Learned Through Piano Practice

By |2023-08-03T15:56:27-05:00August 21st, 2020|Categories: Character, Christian Living, Christianity, Culture, Music|

Most of us have read or heard of the studies that show the mental benefits that come from learning a musical instrument. Such benefits include the development of fine motor skills, opportunity for frequent brain stimulation, improvement in cognition and dexterity, concentration enhancement, and increased neuroplasticity, to name a few. All of these benefits alone [...]

Reflections on George Gershwin’s “Summertime”

By |2020-07-21T15:37:07-05:00July 25th, 2020|Categories: Christian Living, Christianity, Culture, Happiness, Music, Nature|

DuBose Heyward’s timeless lyrics and George Gershwin’s iconic melody in “Summertime” speak wisdom to our era of uncertainty. When we hear this American classic, may we always feel the presence of the Lord, remembering that God’s greatest desire is to be with each one of us in heaven for all eternity. “Summertime,” the classic opening [...]

By Razor or Fire: Should the Church “Baptize” Stoicism?

By |2020-06-06T19:30:06-05:00June 6th, 2020|Categories: Christian Living, Christianity, Philosophy, Rome, Stoicism|

O think me worth thine anger, punish me, Burn off my rusts, and my deformity, Restore thine image, so much, by thy grace, That thou mayst know me, and I’ll turn my face. –John Donne, from “Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward” What is the Christian to do when faced with secular thought that speaks truth [...]

How to Bring Millennials Back to Church

By |2020-05-30T23:13:14-05:00May 30th, 2020|Categories: Christian Living, Christianity, Louis Markos, Modernity, Senior Contributors|

What I have found among young evangelicals is a deep level of dissatisfaction at the church’s lack of spiritual power. I can’t emphasize enough how galvanizing a vision of spiritual warfare can be for millennials, in the positive sense of realigning the church as a center of resistance to dark forces. As an English professor [...]

Confronting the Heart of Darkness

By |2023-09-29T05:34:12-05:00May 19th, 2020|Categories: Books, Christian Living, Christianity, Dwight Longenecker, Imagination, Joseph Pearce, Literature, Religion, Senior Contributors, War|

Immortal Combat: Confronting the Heart of Darkness, by Dwight Longenecker (160 pages, Sophia Institute Press, 2020) It was, I believe, C.S. Lewis who said, speaking of the mediaeval mind and culture, that “the very air was thick with angels.” If, however, angels are real and not merely figments of the imagination, mediaeval or otherwise, the [...]

Sex and the Cancerous Married Girl

By |2020-04-03T12:05:30-05:00April 3rd, 2020|Categories: Christian Living, Christianity, Culture, David Deavel, Marriage, Senior Contributors|

Some articles must be published at one time and not another, either because their stories are simply of the moment or because circumstances reveal them to be impossible for the moment. “‘Dying for Sex’ podcast follows terminal cancer patient’s wild sexcapades” is one of them. Published in the New York Post on March 4, a [...]

The Lockdown Option

By |2020-03-19T10:35:18-05:00March 18th, 2020|Categories: Catholicism, Christian Living, Christianity, Coronavirus, Culture, Dwight Longenecker, Senior Contributors|

If we make the most of the coronavirus lockdown, we will take time to assess our whole lives. The crisis could awaken all of us and be the tipping point for a major reversal in the world’s moral and spiritual decadence. I was first introduced to the riches of Benedictine spirituality when a kind Catholic [...]

On Naming

By |2020-02-22T18:51:51-06:00February 29th, 2020|Categories: Christian Living, Christianity, Imagination, Language|

To cast off our name is to cast off who we are. By embracing a name, crying out to it, we somehow do the opposite. We embed it into ourselves. With every repetition of the Sacred Name, we change the entire cosmos, and we change ourselves. “As the most effective prayer the Church Fathers use [...]

The Real Season of Giving

By |2020-02-26T16:17:05-06:00February 25th, 2020|Categories: Christian Living, Christianity, Culture, David Deavel, Lent, Senior Contributors|

The way to preach the greatness of what Christians call Lent is to preach the demanding side of it. Tell those around you to give things up until it hurts a bit, till they feel an ache inside that they now can’t pretend to fill with double-stuffed Oreos and beers and binge-watched television series. Then [...]

Leadership, Hypocrisy, and Dante’s “Inferno”

By |2020-01-03T07:25:25-06:00January 2nd, 2020|Categories: C.S. Lewis, Christian Living, Christianity, Culture, Religion, Virtue|

C.S. Lewis once wrote that “of all the bad men, religious bad men are the worst.” Reflecting on the various revelations in the Church within the past year that involved poor leadership, hypocrisy, and scandalizing behavior to say the least, it is hard not to think of the words of C.S. Lewis and recall Dante’s [...]

Debating the Benedict Option

By |2021-12-07T17:12:01-06:00November 1st, 2019|Categories: Books, Christian Living, Christianity, Culture, Senior Contributors, St. Benedict, Thomas R. Ascik|

Rod Dreher’s book, “The Benedict Option,” has gone on to become an international cultural event. Yet, today, it is not clear whether the book has had any influence on Church institutions and leadership. Has the Benedict Option then been a failure? Should other “options” be considered? Rod Dreher’s book The Benedict Option, a New York [...]

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