Heroism

Winning the Long Defeat

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...

Warfare in Epic Poetry

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...

We Must Again Become Soldiers of Christ

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…

“The Blue Cross”

Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hear men’s real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil?... Between the silver ribbon of morning and the green glittering...

The Quest for Love

Humanity is mystified by Love. All humans experience it. None can explain it. The mysterious genesis of this strange gift, the wondrous beginnings of this bizarre quality within the human heart prompts the greatest quest of all: the quest for Love...

“The Last Jedi” and the End of Heroism

The Last Jedi seems intent on burning down the archetypes of the heroic past. When the hero fails to be a hero, and furthermore denies his own status as a hero, what is the rationality behind such postmodern disenchantment?...

Don Quixote: Saintly Knight

By viewing Cervantes' Don Quixote as a type of saintly hagiography, and Quixote's actions and motives as following the example of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Don Quixote turns into San Quixote, a knight who fights not on the plains of Spain but on a spiritual plane, by means of his...

War Teaches Wonder Woman a Lesson

The perennial moral that Wonder Woman learns is that evil, and the war which is one of its manifestations, can never be finally destroyed in human history... It’s been many years since...

The Goddess’ Cruel Famine in “The Homeric Hymn to Demeter”

There is, in myth, a recurring structure that, once deconstructed, indicates how myth is generated. Myth hides the truth about its “missing link” to reality: namely, the real...

Saint George Rides Again

Someone once cracked wise by saying, “Everyone has a book in them…and for most people that’s where it should stay.” Therefore when someone sends me the manuscript, the book, the outline for a book, or a book...

Remembering the History of Memorial Day

Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation’s service. There are many stories as to its actual beginnings, with over two dozen cities and towns laying...

Death: The Point of Intersection

“In my beginning is my end.” ∼ T.S. Eliot In a passage often cited from the Pensees, which the author sets down in grim and graphic detail, Pascal summons the reader to reflect on the awful finality...

Batman: Western Man & Legend

I’m a Batman snob. There, I’ve admitted it. And, I’ve been a Batman snob since I was a kid in the mid 1970s when I first became aware of the mythic superhero. And, though I don’t collect...

Finding Heroism in Cinema & Television Science Fiction

Where are the Heroes? Where in this modern and post-modern world do we find an embrace of heroism and the heroic virtues? Certainly not in most literature published since the...