American culture is surely decadent. Its decay is palpable to any sensitive observer who reads the feuilleton section of the local newspaper or attends a university. But is our decadence terminal? Is our civilization on a collision course with extinction? The Culture We Deserve by Jacques Barzun (200 pages, Wesleyan University Press, 1989) Politically America [...]
In his lectures about three musical geniuses—Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert—Dietrich von Hildebrand shows how the integration of music with spiritual and philosophic insight can enrich our musical understanding. Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, by Dietrich von Hildebrand, trans. John Henry Crosby (109 pages, Hildebrand Project, 2025) When a distinguished Catholic philosopher discourses on three distinguished composers of [...]
Some guys have it and some guys don’t. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart obviously had it. By age eight he was already writing symphonies you can still hear on the radio. And there is no sign that the Mozart fad will blow over very soon. A couple of years later he was writing operas, which culminated, for [...]
Today Christians of all stripes are responding in defense of the embattled family, but our eventual success will be enabled by the image of the Madonna, the Mother of God, especially as the "Stabat Mater," the Mother standing beneath the cross of her bruised and broken Son, suffering more than any other human creature has [...]
Contemporary composer Michael Torke’s music invites us to slow down the frenzied pace of our lives, to reflect on who we are as human beings, where we have been and where we are going. His is indeed music for the ages. We often lament the decline of culture, but I would submit that the decline [...]
A profound Christian influence in small things still lingers despite these brutal and atheistic times. Those who defend tradition must fight tooth and nail to defend what is still Christian in the present culture, wherever it is found—even in fonts. As the Culture War rages, no field is exempt from its reach. Much has been [...]
Jesus Christ remains absolutely central to the life of the Church and, indeed, to the whole created order of the universe. In a Catholic economy of salvation, the two orders of nature and grace, of man and God, are not sundered one from the other. Jesus became the Savior of both realms, and God meant [...]
To enter a universe peopled with objects whose function is to give pleasure is also to establish contact with the order of pure beauty. The words “beauty” and “beautiful” have become unfashionable, not indeed with artists, who use them quite freely even in our own day, but rather with the school of those aestheticians who [...]
What exactly is culture but an embodied religion, a faith that is given flesh and blood and bone in a visible and public way? Might it be possible, therefore, to build a culture where it is easier for men to be virtuous? I am looking at a couple of random lines lifted from a bleak little [...]
I propose to address the question, how does one survive—and I mean survive as something—in a world that may not? How does one remain sane in a world that is insane; how does one live without fear in a world in which the only certainty is that nothing is certain? "The Speech" was addressed in [...]
6th January The Epiphany of Our Lord “…the star beckoned the three wise men out of their distant country and led them to recognise and adore the King of heaven and earth. The obedience of the star calls us to imitate its humble service: to be servants, as best we can, of the grace that [...]
5th January Eve of the Epiphany of Our Lord Twelfth Night and the drawing to a close of the twelve days of Christmas and the vigil of the Feast of the Epiphany! 12 Days of Christmas Carol: On the twelfth day of Christmas, my True Love gave to me twelve Drummers Drumming: The twelve points [...]
Charles Murray may well have been both a well-educated agnostic and a happy one, but today he believes that the “inescapable conclusion” is that “a God created a universe that would enable life to exist.” And in his new book, he seeks to nudge secularists along the same route that he has taken to this [...]
12 Days of Christmas Carol: On the tenth day of Christmas, my True Love gave to me ten Lords a-Leaping: The Ten Commandments. Poem: Hilaire Belloc - "Courtesy" Of Courtesy, it is much less Than Courage of Heart or Holiness, Yet in my Walks it seems to me That the Grace of God is in [...]