In “The Lord of the Rings,” the One Ring and the One Sin are symbolic similitudes. As the One Ring is “unmade” on Mount Doom, so the One Sin is “unmade” on the hill of Golgotha, the place of the skull. Therefore, if the Ring is synonymous with sin in general and Original Sin in [...]
In “Ash Wednesday,” T.S. Eliot repudiated his ironic style along with his despairing and nihilistic view of the world. When he wrote it, he was turning from the hell of the wasteland of unbelief to receive his ashes and begin his long Lent. T.S. Eliot’s secret baptism in 1927 marked one of the most remarkable [...]
Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope I no longer strive to strive towards such things (Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?) Why should I mourn The vanished power of the usual [...]
On grace depends our salvation, but we have neither a right to grace nor the power to compel it. Grace must reveal itself to us, and only then will we recognize it. Through your creation, O Lord, goes a voice that reminds us of something that is above everything created. The things and their ordering, [...]
The American people have, unfortunately, come to see the president as the embodiment of their hopes, their dreams, and their nightmares. It is time to begin a conversation about the nature, goals, and limits of the U.S. Presidency. When it comes to the American Founding, broadly defined, it’s hard for this born-and-bred Kansan not to [...]
“Should not church music be mostly for the heart?” —Joseph Martin Kraus The Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead—the Requiem, sometimes called Missa pro Defunctis (or Defuncto) or Messe des Morts—is surely the most dramatic of liturgical forms and has inspired countless composers, from medieval times to the present. What the Czech composer Antonin Dvořák, a devout [...]
True love makes one humble. All of a sudden our weakness, misery, and imperfection flash up before our minds, but with no depressing effect. We see our mistakes with the wish to unveil them to the loved one, and this unveiling is coupled with the wish to beg for his or her help in order [...]
While Benedict XVI may not himself have made great contributions to the natural sciences, he made what is much more important: a contribution to understanding a world in which the truth is one, is God’s, and, from atoms to archangels, is capable of being seen as connected. A great deal has been written about the [...]
Wilhelm Röpke asked how to address the problems of social fragmentation and the loss of community feeling, in a world where the market is left to itself. Röpke’s own idea was that society is nurtured and perpetuated at the local level, through motives that are quite distinct from the pursuit of rational self interest. Two [...]
It can be said of Cicero and his role within the West that, in hindsight, he becomes a figure much larger than he himself actually was; he is a touchstone, a fountainhead, a rock upon which we can place our fondest and dearest dreams. How do I define the Natural Law? Taking my cue from [...]
A hero is someone you admire to the point of losing sleep over. A hero is one the ancients were tempted to worship, with the ardent hope that some of the strength from his dead body would seep into the ground and make their crops fertile. A hero, you admit, is better than you are, [...]
Do you wish to understand the birth of right and left? Examine the debate between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine occasioned by the French Revolution. The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left by Yuval Levin, (304 pages, Basic Books, 2014) Those seeking a deeper understanding of the roots of contemporary [...]
We live in a world that desperately needs Thomas More’s wisdom. We need his understanding of God, his understanding of virtue, and his understanding of the complexities of the human person. The Essential Works of Thomas More, edited by Gerard B. Wegemer and Stephen W. Smith (1520 pages, Yale University Press, 2020) Though he’s only [...]
Ronald Reagan’s version of conservatism was far more pro-government than was Barry Goldwater’s. Compassion, not liberty, was Reagan’s guide. This raises the question: To what extent is the success of modern political conservatism dependent upon the conservation of liberal, even progressive, reforms? The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue Collar Conservatism [...]