Paradoxical as it may seem, it remains true that man is perfect in exact proportion to the subjection he gives his superiors, to that subjection given the Supreme Being who is the First Cause and Last End of every creature. As a matter of fact, there cannot be atheism. Man may vociferously deny that he [...]
How, we wonder, can we know the lightness of His burden and the easiness of His yoke? Unless we are gifted by some special grace, this is not the work of one day or one night. We must surrender to the divine pedagogy, to the training that He offers us every day. Matthew 11: 28-30 [...]
There is something undemocratic in a society of machines. Men receive more or less power, honor, and esteem because of their capacity to purchase the use of certain devices—not because of who they are. The capacity to “go camping” proves to a man and his fellows that his access to this or that machine is [...]
Tarzan might not be “real” in a historical sense, but he is an immortal character whose story makes the reader think, wonder, and take delight. That’s reason enough to celebrate his creator in his sesquicentennial year. 2025 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great modern mythmaker Edgar Rice Burroughs—creator of Tarzan, Mars [...]
I had not seen my former student, Adam, for a decade or so after his graduation from Hillsdale College when I ran into him and his young family at the supermarket. "You once asked me" he said, "for what purpose was the soul of man made. I had little in the way of an answer [...]
Should we be true to ourselves—or is this a meaningless cliche? In the great Hamlet, Polonius advises his son: “This above all—to thine own self be true” (I, 3). Oftentimes this kind of talk is used to justify the subjective view of reality that we truth-lovers oppose: “If I should just be me, then you have no business telling [...]
The Vatican has issued an official document on AI. The Church is willing, in the face of an aggressively rising transhumanistic tide, to state the obvious: machines do not—and cannot—do what humans do or be who humans are. There are many—myself included—who are tempted to give a knee-jerk reaction, one that goes something like this: [...]
Sexual difference is a symbol of one’s relation to the world, the whole of reality, to all others (and even to oneself), and ultimately to God. Initially, it may seem that the answer to the question that forms the title of this brief reflection would depend on the way one chose to define the first [...]
The purpose of human conversation is not limited to pragmatic ends, as if we only spoke in order to learn new recipes and get salient tips on what stocks to invest in. A good conversation is always a discovery of the person who reveals himself in speech. So much fighting concerning AI is really no [...]
All play is an attempt to approximate to the Creator, who performs his work with the divine seriousness which its meaning and purpose demand, and yet with the spontaneity and effortless skill of the great artist he is, creating because he wills to create and not because he must. Man, according to Plotinus, is a [...]
Although Pythagorean mathematics bears little resemblance to what we find in today’s textbooks, its foundation was laid by ancient lovers of wisdom. By rediscovering its original significance, mathematics might guide our minds not toward engineering aimed at mastering nature, but toward contemplation, preparing us for deeper contact with the realm of spirit and its magnificent, [...]
The issue of women’s ordination is one comparatively minor aspect of the much larger issue of our times: the destruction and distortion of human sexuality and ultimately the destruction and distortion of the human race itself. The ordination of women in the Church of England was the catalyst for my conversion to the Catholic Church [...]
Like every person, I live in two worlds: the temporal and the eternal. I now see that every person I 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 [...]
UFOs are supposed to be the stuff of conspiracy theories and fringe documentaries. And yet many high-ranking government officials believe some of the most explosive claims about UFOs to be true. How would this potential reality affect the conservative worldview? On December 13, 2023 Majority Leader Chuck Schumer took to the Senate floor to deliver [...]