The Hopeful Mysteries are a new set of meditations on the rosary, the beloved Catholic devotion. They arose within the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee in Florida in 2024 and were approved by the local bishop, William Wack. The bishop’s approval signified that this new set of mysteries are “worthy of pious devotion anywhere,” although they have [...]
My heart breaks for Tolkien's Denethor, whose life ended unnecessarily, as bitterness, anger, and hopelessness in the face of evil consumed him. Let our prayer be that, even as we observe the darkness at the doorstep of Western Civilization, we imaginative conservatives stand at our posts and look to the Heavenly Father as our protector. [...]
Saint Therese’s spirituality is grounded firmly in the truth that God’s love comes before anything else in our lives. She understood that any relationship with God must begin from the acknowledgment of our complete dependence on him. Children are fairly helpless. From a newborn even up through the teenage years, children require so much from [...]
Please join Peter Kalkavage as he discusses the metaphysics of music: music's role in the liberal arts, the paradox in the union of rational and irrational, order and feeling in its composition, and music's connection and reflection of the deeper order of the natural world, of being. Introduction: In this podcast, we hear from Peter [...]
The doctrine of new creation is a treasure of our faith, one of our strengths, which sets us apart from other worldviews and philosophies throughout history and throughout the globe. We must not lose it, for it is the source of our hope in a God who creates, restores, and redeems—an active God who is [...]
Is there hope for the American Republic? Of course, there is always hope, because America is built on timeless truths. Those truths can be mocked, ignored, distorted, or forgotten, but they remain true nonetheless. Every spring semester, I have the excellent privilege of teaching “American Heritage” to college sophomores. In that course, we go from [...]
St Mary Magdalen came very early to the tomb on Easter Morning. There is something crucial in the timing: it was still dark. Mary at this point was still going through a trial that had started with Jesus' arrest. She had very little to sustain her, knowing only the destruction of her Master's body on the [...]
Christ descended into hell to deliver His loved ones from their exile. He came to reward those who, from our first father, Adam, to His own foster-father, St. Joseph, had fought the good fight and had finished the race. The second reading from the Office of Readings for Holy Saturday is taken from an ancient homily on Christ’s [...]
I propose to address the question, how does one survive—and I mean survive as something—in a world that may not? How does one remain sane in a world that is insane; how does one live without fear in a world in which the only certainty is that nothing is certain? "The Speech" was addressed in [...]
As institutions crumble around us, our constructed selves are stripped away, and we are more and more reduced to the most basic and existential thing: namely our relationship to God. Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection's method for “practicing the presence of God” consisted of keeping up a continuous dialogue with Him in one’s heart. Brother [...]
For the past quarter of a century I’ve been honoured to edit the St. Austin Review, popularly known as the StAR, a Catholic cultural journal, published six times a year. The StAR was launched in September 2001, the month of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. It appeared in the midst of that darkest of months as [...]
Hope, in reality, is the worst of all evils because it prolongs man’s torment. —Friedrich Nietzsche Both intuition and common wisdom—for we are frequently told to never give up hope—tell us that this statement from Nietzsche is simply wrong. Of course, what Nietzsche especially had in mind was the hope of an afterlife. Disbelieving in [...]
Pope St. John Paul II and Russell Kirk defended freedom within the limits of truth and its authentic or right use. They knew it was crucial to distinguish license and liberty. But they have different approaches to truth. As we discussed the work of Russell Kirk, written in 1954, revised in 1962 and 1988, I [...]
Would I have stood by the cross? Would I have still hoped, if I had watched my Incarnate Hope die? In this world, we suffer from our sins and the sins of others. Jesus comes to us—just as he came to the first disciples—and tells us that he has come to triumph over all the [...]