Whereas Chaucer had depicted April as the bringer of life that lifts the hearts of the faithful, T.S. Eliot curses April for its cruelty in bringing back to life things and thoughts that were best left dead and buried. April is the cruellest month…. The opening words of The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot are [...]
President Trump’s protection of the American economy through the implementation of protectionist principles with regard to trade is nothing less than an extension of his desire to protect America’s sovereignty. "Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength." —Donald Trump (First Inaugural Address) The world is full of ironies... and the world of politics especially. [...]
Taken together, Louis Markos' "Passing the Torch" and Michael Ortner and Kimberly Begg's "The Catholic School Playbook" provide invaluable assistance in navigating the turbulent educational waters of our troubled times. They are also a sign of hope and a source of encouragement, and so are the hundreds of newly founded classical academies that are springing [...]
St. Withburga Over the centuries, the English have been something of a curse to the Irish. English rulers, such as Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and Oliver Cromwell, have sought to impose their will on the people of Ireland, often through the tyrannical use of terror on a defenseless population. There is, however, one [...]
Tradition is the extension of democracy through time. It is the proxy of the dead and the enfranchisement of the unborn. “Tradition may be defined as the extension of the franchise,” wrote Chesterton. “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.” And he [...]
Please enjoy this symposium on the nine symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven, with contributions from our distinguished panel, including composer Michael Kurek and Principal Trumpet of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Balio. Clicking on the CD cover art next to each symphony will guide you to a listening recommendation on Spotify; at the bottom of [...]
The whole “woke” agenda has become a delightful farce, warranting not so much bemusement as amusement. Take, for example, the recently announced decision by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to flagellate Shakespeare for his alleged role in promoting “white supremacist imperialism”. The SBT, which manages historical properties in Stratford-upon-Avon, has promised to “decolonize” its museum collections [...]
Hugh Ross Williamson would be no stranger to controversy. It might even be said that he positively courted it, somewhat like Hilaire Belloc in whose footsteps he walked. What do T.S. Eliot, Charles Williams, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Hugh Ross Williamson have in common? The answer is that they were all commissioned to write plays for [...]
Evangeline is the spirit of those millions of people in multifarious cultures who have been expelled from their homes through ethnic cleansing or other acts of tyranny. She is the spirit of hope that endures and is patient. She haunts those who believe in ghosts. I believe in ghosts. It’s not that I have any [...]
Dwight Longenecker Father Dwight Longenecker will be no stranger to readers of The Imaginative Conservative. Apart from the numerous essays that he has written for this illustrious journal for more years than I care or dare to remember, he has written many excellent books. As with the essays, so with the books. They [...]
Malcolm Muggeridge and Marshall McLuhan are two now-mostly-forgotten TV stars who converted to Catholicism. In the current issue of the St. Austin Review, Daniel J. Mahoney writes of Malcolm Muggeridge, describing him in the title of his essay as a “vendor of words, scourge of ideology, Catholic convert, and witness to the truth.” In introducing Muggeridge [...]
As for the so-called “insults” of Shakespeare, we see that they are all directed at conveying moral truth. They are not insults and naming them as such is an insult to Shakespeare and the truth he tells. Jane Austen, in her first published novel, shows how sense and sensibility need to be kept in a [...]
The Catholic people of the Vendée, aware of the horrors being unleashed by the stormtroopers of the French Revolution, responded courageously to the threat to their Faith and their way of life. Many people will have heard of the French Resistance, the name given to the various underground organizations that fought against the Nazis during [...]
A primary aim of my work is to counter the widespread misconception that Christianity somehow “weakened” or “polluted” the cultures of Europe. It is often claimed by Neo-Pagans that the faith was simply a foreign imposition forced upon an unwilling population. However, a closer examination of contemporary sources reveals a far more nuanced reality. Joseph [...]