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 [...]
The fact is that “unity” is not always good, and “division” is not always bad. Indeed, some unity is downright diabolical. There is, for instance, nothing more united than a mob. The mob mentality is nothing other and nothing less than toxic unity. When G.K. Chesterton first came to the United States and visited New [...]
The fame of the saints is not only good but should be proclaimed from the hilltops. The fortunes of the rich, if used charitably, are goods that can do a lot of good in alleviating suffering and edifying souls. It is not fame or fortune that is the problem but the prideful pursuit of fame [...]
Many great writers have affirmed Shakespeare’s Catholicism. G.K. Chesterton asserted that “convergent common sense” pointed to the belief that the Bard of Avon was a Catholic and that such common sense was “supported by the few external and political facts we know”. Over a hundred years earlier, the French writer, François René de Chateaubriand, insisted [...]
Let us look at some holy women of the early centuries of the Church who are not well known. Whenever the Roman Canon of the Mass is celebrated, there is also a celebration of the saints, dozens of whom are invoked by the priest at the altar. Among these saints are seven women: Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, [...]
It is a fact of history that the prisoner’s progress and the pilgrim’s progress can be synonymous. We think perhaps of the witness of famous prisoners, such as Boethius or Solzhenitsyn. The former wrote The Consolation of Philosophy while imprisoned and awaiting execution, bequeathing one of the classics of Christendom to future generations. His final [...]
Those who turn the pages of Philip C. Kolin's book of poetry, "Evangeliaries," will be going on a pilgrimage of grace. It is necessary, therefore, to slow down. Poetry, especially poetry this suffused with God’s abundant presence, must not be rushed. It must be savoured in silence. I have recently received a copy of Evangeliaries: Poems [...]
Malachy G. Carroll might have had only one novel in him, and he might have only one novel to his largely unknown name, but it’s a minor classic that every Catholic should read. It's 1952, and John Wayne’s latest film, The Quiet Man, is a huge hit at the box office. It is about a [...]
The positive secular reviews that have come in for my off-Broadway verse drama, "Death Comes for the War Poets," show the power of art to touch hearts even in enemy territory, in the secular art community of New York City, that most “woke” of communities in that most “woke” of cities. This shows the evangelizing [...]