Joseph Pearce's "The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful" is a perfect textbook for history classes in Catholic schools, homeschoolers, and anyone concerned to transmit an overview of Catholic history and culture. The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: History in Three Dimensions, by Joseph Pearce (300 pages, Ignatius Press, 2023) The best way to [...]
One of the more remarkable trends in the past five years in Catholic education is the noticeable increase of schools embracing a “classical education.” Ten or twenty years ago, the Catholic classical school was a start-up by disgruntled laity. Now one can find here and there whole diocesan school systems that have embraced the classical [...]
The extreme improbability of the “very perfectly precise” conditions needed for a sustainable universe capable of sustaining life within it was calculated by Oxford mathematician-physicist Roger Penrose in 1989. The number that Penrose calculated with respect to the conditions necessary for sustaining life is astronomical. At the beginning of his book, Science at the Doorstep [...]
The poet relies upon on a shared understanding that gives his imagination the oxygen to sustain it. The world lacks certitude about its direction, and we want most of all to awaken the poetic powers urgently necessary for the long rebuilding that lies ahead. For the past month or so, I have been doing daily [...]
The very fact that American Catholics chose a bishop in 1789 was an indication of a new-found boldness in the wake of the nation’s independence. Prior to the Revolution, followers of the Roman faith had realized that it was a risky proposition to establish an episcopate in a country dominated by Protestants. In these United [...]
Five years ago, when I was in Europe leading a pilgrimage tour to England with Joseph Pearce, I learned that the Shroud of Turin was to be on display for veneration in Turin. After the pilgrimage in England I made my way to Italy where I was joined by a friend. After a few days [...]
The kingdom of heaven would not appear before the eyes of men with a crash of thunder and a blaze of lightning. It would begin, in itself and in each man’s heart, humbly, almost insignificantly, as small as the mustard seed. Only Son, by Walter Farrell, O.P. (226 pages, Cluny Media) “And His mother and [...]
There’s something personal and unforgettable in the anger of someone who passionately protects the good. Good wrath is profoundly instructive. We hope in God’s mercy, yet we are mindful of His justice, which is not presented to us as dispassionate correction. My wife and I had a mentor, a wise man and forceful leader, who [...]
Many in our society consider religion merely an instrument of power, and they believe that the “correction” of inherited beliefs and practices can be forced upon the unwilling. But there’s an enormous difference between people who choose the real common good and people forced to submit to a state ideology. When I went into the [...]
George Herbert’s “Easter Wings” is a witty, surprising, and smart poem, which teaches a profound theological truth: Created with perfect blessings, it is man’s foolishness and fall that is to blame for his ending up poor and thin. I was college student afflicted with a serious case of Anglophilia when I discovered George Herbert and [...]
Blinding light surrounds me. My eyes, grown old from endlessly straining in vain for light, begin to adjust. As they open, I see a man bearing a staff. “AWAKE O SLEEPER! ARISE FROM THE DEAD!” Editor’s Note: The following is based on a precious text of the Triduum, read as the second reading in the [...]
Christ descended into hell to deliver His loved ones from their exile. He came to reward those who, from our first father, Adam, to His own foster-father, St. Joseph, had fought the good fight and had finished the race. The second reading from the Office of Readings for Holy Saturday is taken from an ancient homily on Christ’s [...]
Most Catholics seem to intuitively grasp that adoration of the cross is not idolatry. But that didn’t stop a smart-aleck high school senior like myself from pressing the point. “We do what!?” I thought. “Isn’t this idolatry!” But there it was “All, after genuflecting to the Cross, depart in silence.” It was the morning of [...]
“Good Friday is not just one day of the year,” Fr. Richard John Neuhaus writes in "Death on a Friday Afternoon. " “It is a day relived in every day of the world, and of our lives in the world.” There is “no denying that the cross is surrounded by glory,” wrote Fr. Richard John Neuhaus in Death [...]