Father Christmas and the Christian father share a domestic priesthood that presides over the Christmas mysteries. Christmas calls on fathers far and wide to take up the books of Christmas, to draw their children into a ring round fire or tree to be read to... When St. Nick drives his miniature sleigh full of toys drawn [...]
The cover of a book is like the door of a quaint cottage in the woods. It entices, appeals, and even tempts you to peek in the window before you walk inside the story. These beauties are ones families can give and purchase for a lifetime of use… I do love a beautiful book. The [...]
While hall passes and tardy slips are still used in schools, violations of more important principles seldom have real consequences… Not a Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth by Everett Piper (256 pages, Regnery Publishing, 2017) Dr. Everett Piper’s Not a Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth[1] talks about the political correctness [...]
In the second act of Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera, “Hänsel and Gretel,” there is a treasure that will live forever in the hearts of countless listeners: Fourteen angels take the stage and gather round and protect the children, a prayer come to life. Hansel and Gretel waited deep in the forest for their father. When noon came, each ate [...]
We fail to do justice to the Christmas season if we fail to do justice to our neighbours. Like God Himself, we must also show good will toward men. As we approach the season of good will, we do so to celebrate and commemorate the good will of God towards Man. “For God so loved [...]
For Jane Austen, happiness in general is the goal of human action done according to morality, a code of conduct according to which every person has value; and happiness in marriage is the result of each spouse valuing and pursuing the other’s happiness above all else… In our time, according to one of several divergent [...]
What we have to avoid is the sort of thinking that leads to the belief that we’ve lost: the belief that we’ve got to batten down the hatches and try to salvage the remnant that’s left of Christian civilization. We haven’t lost… A few months ago, I gave a couple of talks at a C.S. [...]
“Leave It to Beaver” was very much a medieval morality play, in which the character of the Beaver repeatedly succumbed to temptation, suffered the consequences, and was guided back on the path of virtue. Russell Kirk defined the moral imagination as “an enduring source of inspiration that elevates us to first principles as it guides [...]
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 [...]
In America, we have taken the happy childhood, which encouraged children to be independent explorers, and instead cultivated petulant, incapable, and safeguarded children… When it comes to children’s stories, an old favorite of mine is The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgson Burnett. Being a classic, many will know that the story revolves around three children who discover a long-abandoned [...]
Machismo is the failure to grow into the fullness of what it means to be a man. The mark of machismo is the boast and braggadocio of the braggart. It is the mask of pride, worn by those who lack humility… Once upon a time, when I was a boy, I recall watching a Western [...]
Most truly honoured, and as truly dear, If worth in me or ought I do appear, Who can of right better demand the same Than may your worthy self from whom it came? The principal might yield a greater sum, Yet handled ill, amounts but to this crumb; My stock's so small I know not [...]
We find joy when we lose the self in activity, in those good things that are outside ourselves: making art, doing science, playing sports, educating the young, or caring for the old and disabled. Joy is nature’s way of telling us that we are fulfilling our nature. Even a cursory glance at the interior life [...]
The theme of C.R. Wiley’s “Man of the House” is that the Great Progressive Fallacy—the individual is the moral center of the culture, and that the state is the individual’s protector—serves only the forces of destruction… Man of the House: A Handbook for Building a Shelter that will Last in a World that is Falling [...]