Every person we meet in ordinary, daily affairs is part human and part divine, a storytelling self, often confused, dislikable, and in pain, but always transient; and a mysterious self, deathless, an image of God, worthy of unconditional love… The Buddha, at the age of thirty-five, preached his first sermon to five ascetics, his old [...]
What ideology ever threatened America more than Islamic extremism? And yet might Islam, which once helped save and preserve Western thought and culture a thousand years ago, do something similar this century, helping to bring us back to a more spiritual, less materialistic, epoch?… 1938. The world is on the threshold of the most devastating war [...]
According to Sir Roger Scruton, traditions and attachments to place and home are precious as they give order and meaning to life. They fill a basic human need. Once destroyed, they cannot be brought back. G.K. Chesterton famously wrote “The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at [...]
Irving Babbitt believed that man defined himself not by his rights, but by his duties, and particularly how willing he was to restrain his darker impulses and sacrifice himself for another… Famously, when Paul Elmer More and Irving Babbitt were debating one another while on a walk, the former, exasperated, asked: “Good God, man. Are [...]
The floodwaters of Hurricane Harvey washed away the dividing lines of race, religion, and class, revealing character and the basic decency at the core of what it means to be human. What makes Houston’s heart beat most truly is faith in God… Hurricane Harvey revealed the huge heart of Houston through the biggest natural disaster [...]
“You cannot assume your personal opinions are the truth. This is why we study history: to use the slashing blade of reason like a machete to hack through the dark jungle of false opinion until we see the light of truth”… When Professor Stephen Tonsor had finished his prepared remarks on Christopher Dawson, arguably the [...]
Mass is not supposed to make me comfortable—it’s supposed to make me more holy… After thirty-five years as a liturgical musician, it’s amazing how little I really know about the liturgical music of the Roman Rite. Then again, what should I expect when my earliest memories of music at Mass tend to involve now-forgotten attempts to make [...]
Historical sources often present the Holocaust as the logical conclusion of traditional Catholic anti-Judaism; the pope should be demonized because he headed an institution that was the source of the hatred of Jews. Is this accusation fair? Few episodes in recent Church history arouse as much attention as the alleged silence of Pope Pius XII [...]
In freeing the student in his studies and liberating man socially through education and through every sort of technique and social institution, John Dewey remains an interesting and commanding philosopher… We will first mention decisive influences on John Dewey and then give a résumé of his philosophy of education. It is only within such a [...]
The more silence can become a way of life in this noisy age, the more a new culture will radiate from its blessings… Last week I suggested that, despite the drift of Western culture, a time like ours can actually shelter a deep hope for renewal. The Catholic historian Christopher Dawson, with his long perspective, has [...]
The imagination is a gift from God, given in His own image, to conceive of a Glorious Reality that does exist, that we cannot yet fully see. Why is a sentence from C.S. Lewis delightful while an equally true statement by another, ordinary writer, is not? “I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun [...]
Star Wars is an icon of the modern idol of distraction that has become the destiny of a generation of lost souls. Modernity’s enchantment with the film is rooted in a religious hunger for transcendence—but God has been left off the modern menu. And the Lord’s anger was kindled against Israel, and he made them wander in the [...]
“All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World. Look at yon butterfly. If it swallowed all Hell, Hell would not be big enough to do it any harm or to have any taste.” Editor’s Note: In The Great Divorce C.S. Lewis [...]
This time of retrenchment is also the opportunity to begin reconceiving what a new Christian culture—made from the old—might look like… The recently revived Wyoming School of Catholic Thought has me thinking about how we escape from the “immanent frame,” as Charles Taylor describes our secular age. In a lecture and discussion led by Dr. [...]