As Election Day approaches, many have raised serious moral questions regarding how to vote. Sadly, in our great nation, we confront a situation in which both major political parties espouse certain agenda which are flagrantly contrary to the most fundamental tenets of the moral law, agenda against the inviolable dignity of innocent and defenseless human [...]
There was a time, a far healthier time, when the heroism of those who defended Malta from the Islamic onslaught was lauded by the whole Christian world. Jean Parisot de Valette All saints are heroes, but not all heroes are saints. There are some who have made great sacrifices for Christendom while not [...]
The seven pillars of Western Civilization are the edifying edifices which tower over the landscape of the centuries as a fortress of faith and a beacon of reason. Islam has served throughout the centuries as an outside force which has repeatedly laid siege to the fortress, seeking its overthrow. Several weeks ago I wrote an [...]
What makes this election year so strange is a greater shift away from reality. The election seems like a show, not a civic duty. Candidates are more like actors than future public servants. It all seems so staged. Everything is choreographed to improve poll numbers and ignore issues. However, the main reason things are surreal [...]
As we dispense with religious institutions, beliefs, and practices—as we dispense with God Himself in the ridiculous belief that we are enough on our own—we leave ourselves open to barbarism within and a more overt barbarism from without. Anyone who knows anything about the Judeo-Christian tradition (an increasingly small group, I know), is aware that [...]
When trying to understand Scripture, we need to establish an analysis of concrete terms. But if we aren’t careful, we just might explain away the beauty of descriptive language in the Bible. Saint Augustine of Hippo encountered the same issue, and not just among his youngest students. In humanities coursework, we often train students to [...]
There are few twentieth-century intellectual figures to whom one might apply the adjective “essential.” One of the earliest is Paul Elmer More, perhaps the last century’s greatest Christian apologist. The final appeal of the humanist is not to any historical convention but to intuition. —Irving Babbitt, “Humanism: An Essay at Definition” in Norman Forester, Humanism [...]
What do we make of the four “Almost Sacraments”? Among other things, we might note how they bear upon a common interest that is, sadly, more and more neglected in today’s Church: young men. How many sacraments are there anyway? Seven? Two? Two-and-a-half? If you are Roman Catholic today, your Church has handed down this [...]
Paul T. Mascia's novella, "Nazar’s Journey," is full of hope, and yet it is set in the midst of one of the grimmest and deadliest episodes in recent history, in which it would have been very easy for people to lose all hope. Nazar's Journey, by Paul T. Mascia (Austin Macauley Publishers, 2024, 141 pages) [...]
To the ill-considered hopes of the last two centuries, which have reduced us to insignificance and brought us to the brink of nuclear and non-nuclear death, we can propose only a determined quest for the warm hand of God, which we have so rashly and self-confidently spurned. More than half a century ago, while I [...]
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 of [...]
It’s time for Orestes Brownson to re-enter our contemporary political discourse, and on the campaign trail to remind us, first, that all just authority is from God, who instituted natural law, and also, that moral authority is not relative. I. The Brownson Revival In 1993 Peter J. Stanlis revisited Orestes Brownson’s political thought by reviewing [...]
What the faith of the Catholic Church can offer is a framework—intellectual, imaginative, and moral—for the pursuit of all the good that pertains to human destiny, and its effective bestowal in the grace of conversion. The Church civilizes while she evangelizes. But she evangelizes first. Secularisation is far more of a challenge to Christianity in [...]
The Roman Empire was unique because it espoused the principle of moderation in politics. This is what permitted the unique dynamism of a uniquely changing but uniquely enduring political form: from city, to empire, to nation. And that dynamism may still propel us today as a principle of rebirth, if only we recapture its essence. [...]