What do the films of Frank Capra (It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, You Can’t Take it With You, Lady for a Day, Lost Horizon, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Meet John Doe, etc.), the musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein (The Sound of Music, The King and I, Oklahoma, Carousel, South Pacific, [...]
We must respect the difficulty and danger of the jobs of those who protect us and stop willfully blinding ourselves to the unpleasant realities around us. Let us defend, support, and celebrate our police and our military; without them, our world would be a far more perilous place. This semester, I am happily exercising one [...]
As an English professor who has taught the Odyssey every semester for the last 35 years, along with a dozen or so film classes on Hitchcock, Capra, musicals, Hollywood studios, and film classics, I awaited the release of Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey with great anticipation. Overall, I was impressed by the film and by Nolan’s fresh [...]
Author's Note: This essay is dedicated to the memory of Barbara J. Elliott, my friend and colleague at Houston Christian University. Her academic and spiritual mentorship of my daughter Anastasia led, in part, to her decision to, like Barbara and Peter Kreeft before her, cross the Tiber to Rome. The Mirror, the Mask & the [...]
If we wish to avoid the culture of death, we need to heed the words of the wisest. We need to use their wisdom to demolish those philosophies which are built on the shifting sands of falsehood. We need to invite Socrates, Plato and Aristotle into our classrooms and into our lives and our libraries. [...]
Wayne Braudrick spares no punches in calling men to live up to a biblical ideal: one which expects them to be focused servant leaders who are true to their word, who fight for the right, who commit themselves to life-long learning, and who form strong, lasting friendships. Whatever Happened to Manhood? A Return to Biblical [...]
To curse God is not to resolve the suffering, but to give in to it, to make despair the beginning and ending of the universe. But God is bigger than the universe and all the suffering that occurs within it. In the end, all will be set to rights when the one who condemns becomes [...]
Oh, dear sons of the twenty-first century, do not balk at those who call you to live up to your father’s reputation. Do not define yourself against him, as so many of your age have done. If you do, you will dash yourselves on the rocks and miss out on your greater calling. Author’s Introduction: [...]
Augustine’s “Confessions” is first and foremost a prayer to God. Indeed, unless we read it as a prayer, we will not understand it; we will only study it. I Burned for Your Peace: Augustine’s Confessions Unpacked, by Peter Kreeft (240 pages, Ignatius Press, 2016) Back in 1990, I had the rare privilege of teaching in [...]
There is dignity and value in work. You who live in America once knew this. You did not think lesser of a man because he got his hands dirty with honest toil. To the contrary, you thought it a grand thing to build and to create. But all that has changed. Author’s Introduction: Imagine if [...]
Playwright David Lane has graced the Christian community with a formal, blank-verse play that takes up the war of gods and demons. “Dido: The Tragedy of a Woman” retells the tragic tale of the “Aeneid,” but with some dramatic plot twists that allow it to function both as a timeless meditation on the universal issues of [...]
Though I celebrate courage in my "Iliad" and perseverance in my "Odyssey," there is a third, greater virtue, apart from which civilization can neither thrive nor survive. I speak of xenia, a word that your age would translate as hospitality, but which means far more, having to do with the relationship between a stronger and [...]
Together, the corrupting sins of pride and envy destroyed the democracies of ancient Athens and Rome. But what lies at the root of these two greatest of sins? And is there any remedy or antidote that can cure us, and our society, once we give way to them? Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s “Immortal Combat” offers answers. [...]
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 [...]