Let Them Be Born in Wonder

By |2025-08-02T18:32:13-05:00August 2nd, 2025|Categories: Christian Humanism, Christianity, John Senior, Liberal Learning, Timeless Essays, Wyoming Catholic College|

We are made for the stars but rooted in the soil. We are made to seek spiritual realities, but we must use this world, this visible creation, to do so. How the brief life of a storied liberal arts program changed lives the world over. In 1967, at the age of forty-four, John Senior transferred [...]

Doubting the Conventional Narrative About the Schism of 1054

By |2025-08-01T14:38:01-05:00August 1st, 2025|Categories: Catholicism, Christendom, Christianity, History, Timeless Essays|

The conventional narrative of “The Schism of 1054” may attract us by its simplicity and apparent explanatory power. But besides serving as a dubious justification for an ongoing situation, this narrative fails to capture the variety, obscurity, and complexity of human nature inspired by religious conviction that comes into view through the study of history [...]

Roman Death Masks and the Role of Memory

By |2025-07-31T15:01:45-05:00July 31st, 2025|Categories: Art, Culture, Death, History, Patriotism, Rome, Timeless Essays|

Roman death masks—called “imagines”—were actually wax models impressed directly on the face during life, and they bore a remarkable likeness to the person. Displayed during the funerals of the elite, they served as a link between the present and the past and were meant to inspire attendees to patriotic virtue. The recent defacement of statues [...]

Where Is Everything Leading?

By |2025-07-29T22:24:41-05:00July 29th, 2025|Categories: Christianity, Heaven, Michael De Sapio, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

I am frequently surprised when Christians speak as if civilization and life on this earth is going to continue in perpetuity. Are we not living and striving for another and better life—one conditioned, it’s true, by what we do here in this earthly city? My basic outlook on life could be characterized thus: pessimistic about [...]

Anthropology & the Death of the Individual

By |2025-07-28T17:44:36-05:00July 28th, 2025|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Death, Friedrich Nietzsche, History, Philosophy, St. Thomas Aquinas, Timeless Essays, Truth, Walker Percy|

Do you believe in a higher power, something that transcends the “human organism”? If this question is trivialized or ignored, we enter the very sound and soul of despair. Anthropology is the scientific study of human beings. Philosophy, literally translated, is the love of wisdom. Philosophical anthropology, then, is the scientific study of humans for [...]

The Homecoming Book: Hilaire Belloc’s “The Four Men”

By |2025-07-27T21:16:00-05:00July 27th, 2025|Categories: Books, David Deavel, Death, Hilaire Belloc, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

All natural loves, even love of the land, must suffer death and burial in the raw world and the winter of this life. But Hilaire Belloc, who “received the sacrament of that wide and silent beauty” of his native Sussex at night, was confident that he would see it and his departed friends face to [...]

“Judith Triumphant”

By |2025-07-26T11:44:32-05:00July 26th, 2025|Categories: Antonio Vivaldi, Audio/Video, Christianity, Music, Timeless Essays|

Based on the Biblical tale of the young Israelite woman who cuts off the head of the barbarian invader Holofernes, Antonio Vivaldi’s sole surviving oratorio, "Juditha Triumphans," was written to celebrate the 1716  victory of the Republic of Venice over the Turks. "Juditha triumphans devicta Holofernis barbarie" (Judith triumphant over the barbarians of Holofernes), RV 644, is an oratorio by Antonio Vivaldi, the only [...]

Enemies of the Permanent Things

By |2025-07-24T18:25:21-05:00July 24th, 2025|Categories: Benjamin Lockerd, Books, Civil Society, Cluny, Conservatism, Culture, History, Literature, Permanent Things, Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, Timeless Essays, Tradition|

The necessity of personal morality in a thriving community is denied by the enemies of the permanent things, who do not believe that there are permanent standards of behavior or indeed an unchanging human nature, and who seek to create political systems that will make everyone happy without much effort. Enemies of the Permanent Things: [...]

Conservatism and the Life of the Spirit

By |2025-07-22T16:30:00-05:00July 22nd, 2025|Categories: Conservatism, Featured, George A. Panichas, Religion, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

If we are to recover “the moral ideal” and if we are to be reconsecrated to the life of the spirit, we are in urgent need of an unconditional conservatism: lean, ascetical, disciplined, prophetic, unswerving in its censorial task, strenuous in its mission, strong in its faith, faithful in its dogma, pure in its metaphysic. [...]

“Mary Magdalene”: A Sonnet

By |2025-07-21T23:16:33-05:00July 21st, 2025|Categories: Christianity, Imagination, Malcolm Guite, Poetry, Timeless Essays|

The 22nd of July is Mary Magdalene’s day, and continuing my sequence of sonnets written in response to the church year I post this for her. As usual you can hear the poem by clicking on its title or on the ‘play’ button. This sonnet is drawn from my collection Sounding the Seasons, published by Canterbury Press [...]

Decadence and Its Critics

By |2025-07-20T17:51:40-05:00July 20th, 2025|Categories: Civil Society, Civilization, Conservatism, Culture, Gleaves Whitney, Great Books, Jacques Barzun, Modernity, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

Decadence ultimately entails the process of falling away from the vision that orders man's relation to the divine, to the community, to the self, to nature. In the Western context, it signifies a lessening of the hold on the imagination of all that inspires human beings to be devout. Through the ages the death of [...]

Did Edmund Burke Support the American Revolution?

By |2025-07-18T14:51:44-05:00July 18th, 2025|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Conservatism, Declaration of Independence, Edmund Burke, History, Independence Day, Robert Nisbet, Russell Kirk, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

Many conservatives have assumed that Edmund Burke was opposed to the American Revolution. It is, to my mind, an erroneous assumption. “Burke broke his agentship and went publicly silent on the American cause once war broke out,” Robert Nisbet claimed in his most definitive analysis of Edmund Burke, written and published in 1985. His fellow [...]

The Nature of Marital Happiness in “Pride & Prejudice”

By |2025-07-17T21:02:46-05:00July 17th, 2025|Categories: Character, Great Books, Happiness, Jane Austen, Literature, Marriage, Timeless Essays|

In "Pride and Prejudice," Elizabeth Bennet is vehement that the character of the person must be determined in order to make a good choice. While spouses may change over time in superficial ways, the essentials remain constant. While one may hope for the conversion of a scoundrel or a fool, it is not worth banking [...]

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