Sign up for Joseph Pearce’s course on Classical Epic and Tragedy this Fall: https://rosary.college/applicant-registration/ What do the great literary epics tell us about the epochs in which they were written? And, more important, what do these epics and epochs tell us about our own epoch? To what extent are literary epics the children of their [...]
During the reign of the Danish king Canute, a devout Christian, the Faith in England flourished. The high tide,” King Alfred cried. “The high tide and the turn!” Such was the battle cry of Alfred the Great, rallying the Anglo-Saxons against the pagan Danes, as imagined by G.K. Chesterton in his epic poem The Ballad [...]
Shakespeare’s sisters come in all shapes and sizes, good, bad and ugly. So do his men. He believed in the mystical equality of the sexes and the inherent dignity of the human person because he knew that all men and women are made in the image of God. It’s almost a century since Virginia Woolf [...]
When I read Maurice Baring, I feel that, culturally, he is walking on a crystal floor above my head. He is so well read in so many different languages and so well-versed in the full panoramic landscape of Western literature, that I am in awe at the depth and the breadth of cultural experience from [...]
Joseph Pearce’s “C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church” presents a compelling case in suggesting that its subject evolved “into a very Catholic sort of Protestant.” Though C.S. Lewis never became a Roman Catholic, his later works betray a growing affinity for Catholic teaching. C. S. Lewis and the Catholic Church, by Joseph Pearce (220 pages, [...]
Roy Campbell (on the left) Most Catholics have never heard of Roy Campbell. He is forgotten. Neglected. Buried, so it seems, by the inexorable and merciless sands of time. Such neglect is nothing short of scandalous. There was a time, however, when he enjoyed fame and endured infamy, a time in which the [...]
Not just as a Protestant, but as an American, I am not used to having history presented to me from a Catholic point of view. Here are four things Joseph Pearce's "The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful" taught me, and can teach Christians of all denominations, particularly evangelicals. The Good, the Bad, and the [...]
Raffaella Maria Stroik, a 23-year-old ballerina, died tragically in November 2018, drowning in a lake in Missouri. This real-life tragedy has now been transformed or transfigured, as if by magic or miracle, into a beautiful fairytale ballet, inspired by Raffaella’s devout and fervent Catholic faith. Fairyland and perfection have a great deal in common. They [...]
It is always a dangerous and potentially deadly error to consider the enemy of our enemies to be our friend, patting him on the back while he is stabbing us in ours. The truth is that Dr. Harold Bloom is himself a servant of dark forces, which are subtler by far than those politically oriented [...]
Augustine is accessible and applicable because he is one of us. He suffers from the same temptations and succumbs to those temptations. He falls and does not always get up again, preferring to wallow in the gutter with his lusts and his illicit appetites. And yet, like us, he is restless until he rests in [...]
St. Nicholas Owen was one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Nobody hid more priests from the Elizabethan butchers than Owen, whose artful construction of priest holes over a period of eighteen years saved many a priest from the gallows, enabling them to continue ministering to England’s beleaguered Catholics in their hour of [...]
No, G.K. Chesterton is not forgotten. Indeed, reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated. He is alive and well and being discovered by new generations of readers in many different countries. The British journalist, Simon Heffer, has been a voice of sanity and common sense for many years. He supported Brexit and has written [...]
It has long been a desire of mine to sing the praises of the unsung. These are those heroes of Christendom who are neglected and not as well-known as they should be. I am now able to sing such praises due to the generosity of Eric Sammons, editor of Crisis Magazine, who has invited me [...]
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of G.K. Chesterton, an anniversary worth celebrating wherever goodness, truth, and beauty are valued. Sadly, however, this year has also seen the passing of two good men who were lifelong champions of Chesterton’s legacy. In January, Father Ian Boyd, founder of the Chesterton Review, died at [...]