When doctors have become dealers in death, we need to sing the praises of those noble physicians who have taken a courageous stand for the culture of life. Perhaps there is no better test of the health of a culture than the way that it treats its children. The Canaanites sacrificed their own infants to Moloch; [...]
Wilhelm Röpke developed what was called “humane economics,” which placed the dignity of the human person at the core of economic thought, theory, and practice. Wilhelm Röpke In August 1938, as the world teetered on the brink of a second World War, only twenty years after the ending of the previous global conflagration, a [...]
Who are the "Secret Seven" poets who have been sadly forgotten and unjustly neglected, all but one of whom were converts to Catholicism and all of whom everyone should know? It is not often that the name of Enid Blyton, the bestselling children’s author, is mentioned in the same breath or the same sentence as literary [...]
Bartolomé de Las Casas is an unsung hero who wanted to convert the pagan Native Americans to Christ as well as stop the sinful aspects of the European conquest of the New World. Ever since the advent of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s myth of the “noble savage” in the eighteenth century, there has been a tendency to idealize [...]
One of the most egregious examples of the dissemination of the false narrative of fake history is the bias and inaccuracy of the “official” history of England since the time of the Reformation. William Cobbett We live in an age when fake news is rampant. Yet fake news is nothing new. It’s been [...]
Pelagius of Asturias was a warrior of Christendom who is revered by the Catholics of Spain but is largely unknown to the wider world. One of the most enchanting places in the whole of Christendom is Covadonga in the Asturias region of northern Spain. The visitor, on approaching it for the first time, could easily imagine [...]
Few popes have lived in more perilous times than Pius XI and fewer still have shown as much courage in the midst of peril. There have been many bad popes throughout the history of the Church. Indeed, there have been so many that it is a miracle that the Church has survived them. On the other [...]
By the time of his death, Fr. Allan MacDonald was lauded throughout Scotland for his pioneering scholarship in the field of Celtic studies, for his tireless political campaigning to alleviate the plight of the poor, and for his poetry and translations. Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing, Onward! the sailors cry; Carry [...]
In our quest for the truly unsung heroes of Scotland, we must look beyond those flowers which are in full, admirable bloom to those fading flowers which have been neglected. O flower of Scotland When will we see Your like again That fought and died for Your wee bit hill and glen…. The patriotic song “Flower [...]
Nations as well as people, can be unsung heroes. They can suffer and be heroic in their suffering. Poland is such a nation. Hemmed in by neighbors that have all too often been enemies—and, as often as not, conquering enemies—Poland’s whole history has been shaped by suffering. It has been besieged and attacked by the [...]
The 18th century was a low point for the Church, particularly in France. But François-René de Chateaubriand would sow the seeds of the Catholic revival in France. It is hard to say which have been the lowest points in the history of the Church. The fourteenth century was pretty wretched. The papacy, exiled from Rome to [...]
The Catholic Church has produced some of the greatest scientists who have ever lived. These scientists might not be known to Catholics, or else, if they are known as scientists, they might not be known as Catholic scientists. This being so, let’s look at a dynamic duo of great scientists who should be known—and whose Catholicism [...]
E.F. Schumacher succeeded in popularizing Catholic social teaching in a way that far exceeded the limited success of Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton to do the same thing fifty years earlier. It is not often that the publication of a single book can change the perception of millions of people around the world. Small Is Beautiful by [...]
Ngo Dinh Diem, the first President of South Vietnam, and JFK were both Catholics, though Catholics of very different persuasions. Landscape The assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, was one of the landmark moments and one of the most remembered events in twentieth-century history. The assassination of President Diem of Vietnam [...]