What we need in American society are more imaginative resources for thinking about marriage and the great slog of parenthood. We need stories, plays, movies, and shows about the sort of heroism that requires long-haul fortitude and not just courage in the moment. A long-held but somewhat flexible fantasy I have engaged in periodically since [...]
One of the most defining aspects of our humanity is love. We are creatures of affectivity made in love for love. It is the recognition of this fact that makes Homer so eternal: his heroes are heroes of love. In a cosmos governed by lust, strife, and war, the loving deeds of our Homeric heroes stand out. [...]
While we continue to marvel at the steady stream of superheroes being pumped out in comics and movies, I am more interested in ordinary heroes. The ordinary hero is the man or woman behind the scenes. They are the ones who play the steady, supporting role. Natural second fiddles, they are the loyal retainers who [...]
The cynicism of modern-day youth presents us with a great teachable moment. We must tell history as a great myth, for myths are often the best way of expressing truths. They are also the lifeblood of civilizations. “History is marble, and remains forever cold, even under the most artistic hand, unless life is breathed into [...]
Like Jesus Christ, whose image he bears, the priest is a knight who slays the dragon—a warrior against evil. He is one who, like Christ, steps up to do battle with the devil. Have you noticed how blockbuster movies and TV series always feature a warrior as the main character? Our society is supposed to [...]
Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great poets of ancient Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages had been given the gift, not only to peer into the twenty-first century, but to correspond with us who live in that most confusing and rudderless of centuries. Had it been in their power [...]
The mythic theme of descent to the underworld is virtually universal. The hero journeys to the underworld to confront the monster, then returns with the prize. That the hero must go down into the depths to battle the dark forces seems written into the very fabric of human psychology. During a vacation to Belize a [...]
The Iliad is Homer’s vehement attempt to reconcile god and man, clairvoyantly musing on how terrible and wonderful it would be if a man possessed a divine nature. As the heroes of The Iliad are slain in blood, Homer gives each of them an epitaph in poetry, that they may die not as expendable masses, [...]
Against the suffocating world of Nazism, communism, Holocaust camps, and gulags, imagination found a new life in the 1940s and 1950s, as artists strove for a renewal of beauty, goodness, and truth. It is only in this context that one can understand the rise of the “superhero,” among whom none have endured as well as [...]
Oh, love to some is like a cloud, To some as strong as steel, For some a way of living, For some a way to feel, And some say love is holding on And some say letting go, And some say love is everything And some say they don’t know. John Denver (Perhaps Love) [...]
The twentieth century produced many giants and many heroes. Yet many of the giants were not heroes, and many of the heroes were not giants. Hitler was a giant, as were Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. Each of these Nietzschean supermen was responsible for the deaths of millions of people. As for the heroes, one thinks [...]
Actually I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect “history” to be anything but a “long defeat”—though it contains… some samples or glimpses of final victory. – J.R.R. Tolkien Together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat. – Galadriel My kingdom is not of this world. [...]
A culture that fails to represent, or that misrepresents its wars in all their glory, gravity, and tragedy, is a weaker polity. Epic poetry, with its stark recording of the facts and feelings of war, can give cultures and communities access to the reality of warfare and inscribe its memory on the collective consciousness and [...]
Integrity inspires success on the battlefield and in the bureaucracy. Good officers have the mental stamina to find the right thing to do, and they have the moral stamina to do it. The Church will never be reformed until we have Church leaders who are holy, orthodox, and wise… Blessed be the Lord, my rock who [...]