Today, people commonly turn a blind eye and a blind mind to the plagues that threaten to destroy Western culture and human identity, and that move silently beneath the face of placid waters. Fifty years ago today, Steven Spielberg’s suspense thriller, Jaws, took the world by surprise as the pulsing two-note theme and the invisible [...]
The American people have endured a dark age. But today they are choosing courage over comfort. Order over anarchy. Truth over technocracy. And in doing so, they are giving birth to a new moment: A chance to rebuild a republic where men are strong, women are cherished, children are protected, and God is honored. We [...]
William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” presents a dark vision that captures the mood of our age, when all seems to be disintegrating into chaos. His prophetic foresight is even more remarkable in that he sees the Sphinx-like beast rising from the deserts of the East. While the world spins forward in what seems [...]
David Horowitz has been an unrelenting fighter and a happy warrior, and has had his fair share of tribulations. But never has he succumbed to a sense of victimhood. There were always too many good people to appreciate, and when he was young, a world to save, and as he grew older and wiser, warnings [...]
In “Shop Class as Soulcraft,” Matthew B. Crawford tells a story of diminishment, outlining how we went from a nation of independent tradesmen, farmers, and shop keepers to cubicle dwellers. I am not a fan of Ask This Old House, the spin-off of the PBS home improvement program, This Old House. Formerly the companion series to [...]
The Mosaic Church (2025) is an engaging new documentary film about an extraordinary archeological discovery of recent times. In 2004, excavators renovating a prison near the ancient city of Megiddo in northern Israel came across a mosaic floor that, as soon became apparent, originally covered the floor of a Christian worship hall in Roman times. [...]
Beauty has an important place in the central activities of Catholic education. Learning requires discipline but deep down is a feast for the mind and heart. “Too late have I loved Thee, O Beauty, ever ancient, ever new!” St. Augustine was in his forties by the time he penned this personal lament. As readers of [...]
In essence, The Imaginative Conservative is a community of philosophers, dedicated to examining, understanding, and enjoying God’s creation. What better anthem for this journal than Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn’s remarkable Symphony No. 22 in E flat major, known as the “Philosopher” Symphony? Though the nickname was probably not Haydn’s, it was given to the work [...]
The history of the oratorio proper begins in St. Philip Neri’s oratory chapel, where the story of salvation was brought to life with the best of human art, causing audiences fall in love with their faith through the power of beauty. When I was in the eighth grade and the time came to choose my [...]
Richard Wagner’s story of gods and heroes, of giants and dwarfs, is not a fairy tale. It is addressed to modern people, who have lost the ways of enchantment, and for whom the path to heroism is overgrown. It is a story in which law and love, power and property are all caught up in [...]
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 [...]
Why would Christoph Schönborn—a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church and a theologian who specialized in Patristic studies—dedicate so many essays and conferences to a doctrine that appears to overlook the Christian faith? Theology in The New York Times In the context of the debates caused by the “Intelligent Design” movement, an important Catholic contribution [...]
The idea that eternity will be a culture and a civilization, not a disembodied never-never land, is perhaps the most powerful takeaway from Fr. William J. Slattery's "Enchanted by Eternity," and I assume it will be news to many people. It opens up a vast field of wonder and possibility. Enchanted by Eternity: Recapturing the [...]
The bonds among the Church, the Holy Family, and the “domestic church” founded on the sacrament of marriage are intimate and profound. In a host of formal and informal pronouncements and teachings, Pope John Paul II consistently underlined the central importance of the family as the basic cell of human society, and sacramental marriage as the sole foundation [...]