Storytelling is an excellent exercise for cultivating the imagination especially, not just the powers of the intellect. I have been giving some special thought lately to the question of how one might develop a capacity for sound judgment and a desire to build good character through the exercise of the imagination—that is through the careful use [...]
Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue can be taught? [to continue] Or if not teachable, is it acquired by practice, or if neither, whether men possess it by nature or in some other way?” So begins Plato’s dialogue, Meno, opening as abruptly upon the reader as my remarks have upon you this afternoon. You [...]
Music pervades our lives and always has. It has taken you outside of yourselves and taken you deep within. It has been associated with things divine. There comes a time in every year when I find myself saying to a friend or a prospective student that this is a very musical College. After twenty years of [...]
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 [...]
From the Annunciation to the Presentation, from the Wedding at Cana to the upper room in Acts 1 and 2, the Mother of God’s life is undergirded and infused with humility. About a year before being received into the Catholic Church in 2004, the biggest obstacle to conversion for me, a Protestant, who had moved in [...]
Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde should prompt us to search for an antidote to the lovers’ death wish—to pursue a love that preserves rather than destroys, celebrates rather than abolishes individuality, and seeks life rather than death. “They who were two and divided now became one and united.” —Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan and Isolde I come [...]
Plato and Aristotle often connect justice with wholeness. And it is wholeness—the whole of virtue and the whole of a political community—that is very much at issue, and at risk, in Plato’s “Statesman.” I want to begin by saying how my theme is related to justice. Plato and Aristotle often connect justice with wholeness. And [...]
American culture has an opportunity now for renewal through its people of faith. We are being called to care for one another with love. We are being called to live out our virtue in service. The American soul has withered, and awaits an infusion of the lifeblood of love. Whether or not we respond may [...]
Because it is based on natural laws and timeless truths, the republic can be ignored, it can be mocked, and it can be forgotten, but it can never be fully undone. All it takes is an anamnesis, something to rouse us from our slumbers and reassert its many truths and goodnesses and beauties. Long live [...]
Christian schools must not follow their secular counterparts in their educational approach. They must surround their students with the noble, the beautiful, and the true in all areas of the curriculum and the academic environment, encouraging them to become like what they see. In the cultural wasteland of the ’70s, where peace and love had [...]
In his courage and perseverance throughout the Revolution, George Washington revealed his reliance on patience—and feelingly used the word when referring to his men at Valley Forge. In contemporary American society, the relationship between patience and power is often wary and distant: If people have power, then they won’t have to wait. Recently, however, these two [...]
As I looked around that room in Washington, filled with so many powerful people, I realized that one day in Mother Teresa’s life brought more good to the face of the earth than all our efforts combined for a lifetime. It was utterly ludicrous, stepping out of a chauffeured White House limousine to go hear [...]
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, [...]
In this materialistic age, time has become a commodity that can be bought and sold. This is evidenced by the place that the monetization of time holds in common parlance: “spend your time well,” “I have some free time,” “time is money,” etc. It is tragic to see time itself be corroded by the greed [...]