The last three centuries have proven that imposing an ideological vision upon any civilization is cataclysmic. So we must conclude—annoyingly—that no formula can resurrect a Christian culture, but only a Christian response to the concrete needs of real people. Part One: The Rule of Necessity and the Rule of Love Most diagnoses of our current [...]
The only question that matters is this: Is the Church to give the world a Christian shape, or must she instead shape Christianity to the world? Everything turns on the answer we give to that question. As often happens with the most portentous and far-reaching events, the learned and the clever will be the last to [...]
A culture without public prayer is a culture that no political intervention can preserve. If the life of prayer is a vocation offered to all, then it follows that the practice of prayer must equally be within the reach of all. It is not an esoteric exercise, in other words, for which only the most [...]
It took Edmund Burke a very little time to decide that French Revolutionary philosophy posed a massive threat to civilization and social stability throughout Europe. By the end of his life, eight years after the storming of the Bastille, his fears of Jacobin contagion had led him to ask for a secret grave, removed from [...]
None of us wants a theocracy, nor do we wish to have a totally secularized order. But both secular and sacred are to be joined in some way, the only question being how and to what extent. Have we still got a Christian consensus around which Americans of every possible persuasion can rally round? A public [...]
People in my hometown of Galveston, Texas don’t have a superb explanation or philosophy for their city. It’s just their home. It’s a beautiful place with a beautiful history. Statues still stand. The streets are largely clean; the police take care to contain crime to the smallest radius possible. That all is a clear contrast [...]
What is it that finally holds a society together? What enables it to cohere? Nothing less, St. John Henry Newman reminds us, “than a common reverence for a certain sacred possession.” Does anyone know what the central myth of America might be? I mean, isn’t there a story out there we tell ourselves about our origins? Our [...]
Catholic culture is, first and foremost, a society built upon a family whose identity draws from the Holy Family. In a culture where every contour of the public life assists in communicating the message of Jesus Christ, the first citizen of the realm will be the Church, she who is both Bride and Body of Christ, [...]
Every man is his own pope and philosopher-king on the Internet, where our semi-formed and semi-informed opinions are cast as absolutes. Convinced of our perfect knowledge and infallible righteousness, we denounce and demean in harsh, uncharitable terms the arguments of others, and even their very persons. “Minds are conquered not by arms, but by love [...]
In the present polarized climate, there is a constant battle between two ever-more irreconcilable sides. I think this is a good trend since the two parties do not live the fiction of getting along when the points of division are so great. I applaud any effort that results in moral clarity. It clears the air [...]
While Satan and his legions are known for their subtlety, of late it would seem they have become rather bold. From the Minneapolis shooter drawing a picture of himself staring into a mirror with his reflection not human but a beast with horns, to the recently resigned senior physician at the Centers for Disease Control proudly displaying photos of himself on [...]
The problem of authority is not merely a political problem or even simply a problem of faith. It instead requires a gathering up of the whole of life, indeed the world in all of its rich multitude of aspects, in relation to its meaning-granting center. Anxious about trends he was witnessing in the ’60s and [...]
The Minneapolis killings prove that evil exists and hates good. The act was so heinous that Satan unmasks himself by showing his role in inspiring the shooter's hateful messages against the Catholic Church. Satan is real and working inside the postmodern world despite the liberal premise to the contrary. He showed his fiendish face at [...]
In the heavenly city, darkness and night are dispelled by the constant radiance of God. Our earthly cities have made a parody of this. “If universe big how God real?” So goes the tongue-in-cheek version of an atheist argument against God’s existence. More seriously: If the claims of Christianity and the other monotheistic religions are [...]