Amidst the battered "Veritas" of Harvard, there are a few still heroically walking in the footsteps of their Catholic predecessors. It is ironic and risible in the extreme that the motto of Harvard University is “Veritas” because that once-illustrious institution has long since abandoned any belief in objective verity. It has ceased to seek answers [...]
Hilaire Belloc’s final words of wisdom might enable us to become truly oriented, taking the right path at the right pace to the right place. How do we get to heaven? The answer, it seems, is on foot. Hilaire Belloc was a man of many talents and a man of many parts. He wrote poetry [...]
"Into the tempests of the nineteenth century, Juan Donoso Cortes rode as knight-errant, prophet, and Man of the West.” Such is the picture that historian Christopher Olaf Blum paints of one of the most important thinkers of the past two hundred years. Yet the romantic image of Donoso Cortes as a latter-day Don Quixote will [...]
What makes a good priest and what are we to make of a bad priest? These questions are at the heart of two classic twentieth century novels, published just four years apart. The first, Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos, published in 1936, recounts the struggles of a young priest, newly appointed to [...]
Each of us needs to be living courageously in goodness, truth and beauty, remembering at all times that sanity and sanctity are ultimately synonymous. With respect to literature, we need to preserve and promote the legacy of Christendom, of Christian Civilization, by promoting the reading and teaching of the Great Books. Robert Lazu Kmita interviews [...]
If pride might be said to be the making of God in our own image, a lesser form of pride is the making of our gods, our idols, into our own image. This latter form of pride, what might be called pride in the lower key, is made manifest in the multifarious ways in which [...]
The 20th Century is marked by the loss of voices cut short in mid-song by war. There have been so many dark centuries in the history of Christendom that one hesitates to call any particular century the darkest of all. Some have been as dark as the 20th century, but none have been as deadly. [...]
I’ve recently returned from my first-ever visit to Australia. In its wake, I am basking in the afterglow of the experience, as well as enduring the jetlag of its aftermath. The purpose of the visit was a speaking tour to promote the need for a restoration of classical education. Its instigator and organizer was Tim [...]
Franz Jägerstätter and Fr. Gabriel Gay are two lesser-known victims of the Nazis. May their prayers deliver Europe from the wolves of secularism and restore the European nations to the Faith which forged them. Franz Jägerstätter In the previous essay in this series, we honored Blessed Otto Neururer, the first priest to be executed [...]
Blessed Otto Neururer would be the first priest to be martyred by the Nazis but by no means the last. Caesar, like the poor, is always with us. So is Judas. And so are the disciples of Christ. The Tyrant, the Traitor, and the Martyr. These three types of men form the very threads from [...]
Few remember Athelstan, Alfred’s grandson, who is neither lionized by the poets nor canonized by the Church. Yet he was a warrior king who is perhaps equal in greatness to Alfred and possibly rivals Edmund and Edward in piety. See you the windy levels spread About the gates of Rye? O that was where the [...]
Even though it would be a faux pas to offer my own favourites among the papabile who could be elected pope, there is no harm in pondering my personal favourites from among those who have served as popes in the past. In the wake of the passing of Pope Francis, it is not for any [...]
With eyes wide open to the degradation we see all around us, we know that things are rotten in the modern world. Who can deny it? And yet there are more Christians in the world today than there have ever been in the past. The Church is not dead. Christendom has had a series of [...]
According to J.R.R. Tolkien, fairy stories offer recovery, escape and consolation from the sickness, confinement and hopelessness of this world of wickedness. They provide not an escape from reality but an escape to reality. It is an escape from the world of false philosophies and fake realities, rooted in Pride. I believe in fairytales. Take [...]