The tradition, for us in America, is the Western Tradition, most ours because it has given us the two notions and their realizations which we live by in much of our private and civic life. The ancient rhetoricians, who knew their business, taught that the way to begin a speech, the more so a breakfast [...]
Education follows the same law as the physical universe, which is sustained and carried on in dependence on certain centres of power and laws of operation. Education has its history in Christianity, and its doctors or masters in that history. A Benedictine Education, by John Henry Newman (160 pages, Cluny Media) As the physical universe [...]
The three vows of the Benedictine monk are obedience, stability, and conversion of life. In our own ways, we can follow this example, making it real by paying attention to prayer, cracking the books in solid study, and rolling up our sleeves in the honest, hard work of rebuilding what has fallen into despair and [...]
If culture can neither thrive nor survive without religion, then a cultural conservative, which Russell Kirk claims is the most imaginative of conservatives, must fight to preserve the religious foundations of his culture. Apropos of the title of this online journal, I think it appropriate to offer a few Russell Kirk—inspired refections as to what [...]
As revolutionary as they claimed to be, the French Revolutionaries were as old as sin, Edmund Burke assured his readers. “Trace them through all their artifices, frauds, and violences,” he argued, and “you can find nothing at all that is new.” Roughly four-fifths into his spectacular Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke paused. [...]
In his generous and beautifully written book, Robert Reilly leads us through the vast, largely unknown territory of twentieth-century music. Surprised by Beauty: A Listener’s Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music, Robert R. Reilly, Washington, D. C.: Morley Books, 2002. In his generous and beautifully written book, Robert Reilly leads us through the vast, [...]
If our hearts were truly not in this world but in heaven, all the torments that the world could devise would give us no pain. Let us therefore send our hearts to heaven by sending our wealth there. A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, by Thomas More (248 pages, Cluny Media) XIII. Concerning the wise [...]
How much folly could have been avoided if our contemporary leaders truly understood the deeper patrimony of ordered liberty? To maintain ordered liberty, our leaders need to gird up and learn to wield the five swords of imagination, because all must be swung simultaneously with trained virtuosity. Kudos to Gleaves Whitney for his insightful and [...]
The Declaration of Independence, intended as an expression of the common opinion, is truly a text of "right opinion," a benign practical text which also has a peculiarly sound relation to the realm of thought. Section I: The Legacy of the Declaration When American schoolchildren first discover that they have a place in the world they [...]
C.S. Lewis believed that every nation possesses what he called a “haunting,” a “Logres,” which baptizes it with a unique inner life. What, or where, is America’s Logres? Who is the mythological hero that could guide the American identity the way Arthur guided Britain and inspired generations of English poets and artists? During my undergraduate [...]
Historical consciousness is to civilized society what memory is to individual identity. Without memory there are no workable rules of conduct, no standard of justice, no basis for restraining passions, no sense of the connection between an action and its consequences. A culture without memory will necessarily be barbarous. I am delighted to be with [...]
The “Paradiso” has much to tell us about happiness, the perfection of the intellect, the nature of true freedom, the flourishing of community, the role of love in education, and the profound connection that the good and the true have to beauty. “For we shall see him as he is.” 1 John 3:2 The focus [...]
What is the duty of government? What are the rights of man in a civilized society? What is the purpose of law? Mortimer Adler, scholar of, and advocate for, the Great Books, attempts to answer these questions and more in the following interview. Interposed with scenes of discussion from a seminar conducted at St. John's [...]
Everyday life is the true setting for your lives as Christians. Your ordinary contact with God takes place where your fellow men, your yearnings, your work and your affections are. There you have your daily encounter with Christ. It is in the midst of the most material things of the earth that we must sanctify [...]