The romanticism in J.R.R. Tolkien’s great saga was inspired partly by the actions of King Jan Sobieski during the Battle of Vienna in 1683, when Christian Europe stemmed the advance of militant Islam. A minor observation in a recent essay began a series of connections that will please Catholics, conservatives, history hounds, and J.R.R. Tolkien [...]
Enthusiastic supporters of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are particularly impressed by the amount of knowledge that AI apps seem to have. They are convinced that the apps know everything. All one has to do is ask them, and the AI bots will produce a huge amount of information on any subject within seconds. Such results are deemed accurate [...]
Tradition can be either oral or written. Never in the early Fathers do we get the sense that the written scriptures are in any way separate from tradition. St. Irenaeus makes it plain that the writing of the gospels grew out of the apostles’ oral preaching, which itself grew out of the personal experience of [...]
The mid-twentieth-century opera, “The Trial at Rouen,” tells the story of the final days of St. Joan of Arc, her imprisonment, and trial for heresy. Composer Norman Dello Joio employs themes of conscience, belief, and spiritual motivation; he makes us think about the consequences of institutional corruption and the power of individuals to rise above [...]
Robert Lazu Kmita's "The Ultimate Quest" is a mystery story in the truest sense of the word. Confessing that the quest for the location of Paradise is not merely physical but is “theological-metaphysical”, he seeks clues from those who endeavour to read Genesis literally and those who read it allegorically, mystically, and symbolically. Many moons [...]
Authentic discipleship transforms all aspects of life, every day, at work, at home, in all relationships. My discipleship to Jesus is, within clearly definable limits, not a matter of what I do, but of how I do it. Dallas Willard One of the great oaks among us is fallen. Dallas Willard, who died [...]
The theological study, “The Ascension of Christ,” shows us why the ascension is an important and necessary mystery of Christianity: It is the link between Christ’s resurrection and his second coming. It marked a new beginning, opened a new era, and drove the future course of history. The Ascension of Christ: Recovering a Neglected Doctrine, [...]
While we should rightly praise Thomas Jefferson for his authorship of the Declaration of Independence, we should never ignore the role of John Adams. If Jefferson was the pen, Adams was the voice. The Declaration of Independence: A Radical Experiment in Liberty (Stone House Press, 2026) “Who shall write the history of the American revolution? [...]
Jamestown, after much painful experimentation, established the kinds of local institutions, beliefs, and practices that colonizers recognized as the prerequisites to successful settlement and that we have come to recognize as the seedbeds of the American republic. The Jamestown Project by Karen Ordahl Kupperman (392 pages, Belknap Press, 2009) “Discovery” has been a term and [...]
Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind became an immediate sensation upon its publication in May 1953. Prominent newspapers, magazines, and journals throughout the English-speaking world reviewed the book when it came out, sometimes twice, and almost always with depth and respect. Many disagreed with its 35-year-old Michiganian author, to be sure, but they did so with [...]
My feelings about personal injury lawyers are not universally negative, despite numerous examples of their misbehavior. I even harbor a certain tenderness toward them. This is because of their many clever billboard advertisements in Houston, which bring me daily amusement during my various commutes around the city. “Advocatus sed non latro, res miranda populo.” The above [...]
The English have shown themselves to be as “revolting” as the French or the Russians but for a much nobler cause. Let’s raise a glass of the best beer to those revolting Englishmen of the sixteenth century, who rose and died for the Faith of their fathers. Charles Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, who led [...]
In what kind of world is it fair that the United States should shoulder the burden of protecting totally wealthy societies from a corrupt and violent world? Though it would be hard to pin a tail on Trump’s ever-moving and erratic donkey of a myriad of statements on every topic imaginable, it’s pretty clear that [...]
Art has the twin functions of reflecting a culture and shaping it. The problem that contemporary artists face is a difficult one: how to express meaning to a world that has become culturally over-stimulated by the spectacular, the hyper-sexualized, and the dumbed-down by inanity, and which has increasingly become antagonistic to manifestations of Christianity. “We [...]