England is even further from the Faith that forged her today than she was fifty years ago. She has forgotten her roots, or, if she hasn’t, she would like to forget. The problem is that the absence of Christ means the absence of goodness, truth, and beauty. A nation that rejects Christ is committing [...]
Now I, too, would like the university to be a safe space, but a safe space for rational argument about the pressing issues of our time. If a university stands for anything, surely it stands for that idea of truth, as a guiding light in our darkness and the source of real knowledge. Today’s [...]
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. [...]
Apollo and Dionysus coexist throughout Beethoven’s work. Much musical commentary seems to imply that only a titanic wrestle with Fate or an emotional cataclysm qualifies as profound. Laying aside for a moment Beethoven the Myth and listening attentively to his works, we are reminded of the depth of emotion that resides in solidity and perfection [...]
Playwright David Lane has graced the Christian community with a formal, blank-verse play that takes up the war of gods and demons. “Dido: The Tragedy of a Woman” retells the tragic tale of the “Aeneid,” but with some dramatic plot twists that allow it to function both as a timeless meditation on the universal issues [...]
The highlight of a pilgrimage to Rome is to join Liz Lev for one of her increasingly famous tours of the Vatican Museums. Her high-energy presentation, vast knowledge, and enthusiasm are matched by her warm welcome, sense of humor, and genuine faith. […]
Maurice Denis reengaged with myth, symbol, and the human figure at a time when Impressionists had narrowed their focus to mundane subject matter. He showed that there could be an art that incorporated the best insights of abstraction, and the psychological focus of expressionism, but remained wedded to the canons of beauty, harmony, and [...]
In Western society we are so immersed in and surrounded by the philosophy of modernism, that many are hardly aware of it. Modernism may present itself in various forms. Most recently, some aspects of it seem to have appeared among clergy in the Vatican. It is, therefore, relevant to revisit Charles Peguy’s hard-hitting critique [...]
We Americans like to think of ourselves as anti-monarchical; most of us on the Right are self-styled small-r republicans, while Leftists think of themselves as small-d democrats. In addition, we all, Right and Left, fancy that what unites Americans is devotion to a set of ideas to which we all adhere, and which are best [...]
On November 4, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI issued an Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum Coetibus, in response to “groups of Anglicans” who had petitioned “repeatedly and insistently to be received into full Catholic communion individually as well as corporately,” which created for them a new ecclesiastical structure: the Personal Ordinariates. The stated purpose of these was [...]
Blaise Pascal wrote that men hate religion and “are afraid it is true.” But can we agree with him? Some have made clear a hatred for it, but do they fear it? And what about the wider culture? Do people today, generally speaking, fear religion? The renowned physicist Stephen Hawking once heckled that the [...]
What makes an article, or essay, great? Does it need to challenge us to move in a different direction, or can it also challenge us to move higher up and further in to the truths we already hold? You’ve seen it on a thousand social media posts. “This is a great article!” Sometimes you [...]
What are women? Despite my daily presence to my daughters’ lives, their sisterhood remains an enigma. A complex emotional bond exists among the seven of them, a self-enclosed feminine world that I can see and understand, but never truly enter. “Little Women” reminded me of that. What are women, anyway? I’m confused. Recent events, not to mention what [...]
On Tuesday, January 7, 2020, Neil Ellwood Peart valiantly lost his three and half-year battle against brain cancer. On that same day, he entered Valhalla, escorted by at least one Valkyrie, but quite possibly by two or three. Peart has shaped many of us very quietly and sometimes not so quietly. I can state [...]