Give us grace to endeavor after a truly Christian spirit to seek to attain that temper of forbearance and patience of which our blessed savior has set us the highest example; and which, while it prepares us for the spiritual happiness of the life to come, will secure to us the best enjoyment of what [...]
During his recent trip to America, Pope Francis sought to answer a fundamental problem posed by C.S. Lewis in his 1942 sermon “The Weight of Glory.” Lewis was responding to the perception of Christianity as a negative religion, concerned primarily with the virtue of Unselfishness, rather than with Love. In the New Testament, however, Christ [...]
“Without a narrative, life has no meaning. Without meaning, learning has no purpose. Without a purpose, schools are houses of detention, not attention.” – Neil Postman By now few are unaware of the campus unrest sweeping across the country’s institutions of higher learning. The chancellor and president of the University of Missouri have resigned amid [...]
One of the best short poems ever written enfolds the classic Latin call to prayer at the end of its lines: Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, There’s always laughter and good red wine. At least, I’ve always found it so. Benedicamus Domino! Eminently worthy of being committed to memory, this brief masterpiece by Hilaire [...]
(Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Andrew Seeley as he examines how The Dot and the Line can help teach us virtue as a concept key in Christian education. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher) In the cultural wasteland of the ’70s, where peace and love had degenerated into [...]
Person using drugs on having his offer to share refused—“You think you’re better than me?” Person doing the refusing—“Of course I am, have you looked at yourself lately?” It might be wrong to respond to an offer of drugs, or any other vicious “good,” with the lack of charity encapsulated in the very judgmental statement [...]
How should we judge the health of a culture? We might do it by pointing to its greatest virtues. The Greek city states between 500 and 300 B.C., though they were not especially densely populated, gave the West the architectural “language” it still employs for everything from grand hotels to private homes. The colonial house, [...]
Diversity pervades American public life. It is a policy, an ideology, and a regime. That is, diversity is a full governing system its proponents want to spread throughout society, with its own rules, goods, rights, and duties. The goal is revolutionary—establishment of a new way of life in which chosen “differences” are affirmed and valued [...]
A man is not primarily a witness against something. That is only incidental to the fact that he is a witness for something. —Whittaker Chambers, Witness In recent years, conservatives have fallen into a thoroughly oppositional mind-set in American politics. We have had good reasons for doing so. The agenda of the Obama administration has [...]
“Great power often corrupts virtue; it invariably renders vice more malignant. In proportion as the powers of government increase, both its own character and that of the people becomes worse.” […]
So my reservations about Scott Walker as presidential candidate have to do with my reservations about his diagnosis concerning why higher education is not efficient and effective. The disease: Faculty do not teach and otherwise work hard enough, combined with the residual “shared governance” (between faculty and administration) that inhibits administrative innovation and makes proper [...]
The cacophony of the modern public square often includes voices that employ rights rhetoric aimed at promoting licentious views, especially in regard to human sexuality. Those who dare to disagree with these advocates by promoting virtue instead of vice will likely have their livelihoods ruined, and consequently what little remains in America of the innocence, decency and common sense required [...]
You have been reading and talking about virtue for quite a while now; therefore, that is what your teachers asked me to talk about to you. So I drew a hot bath (since the mind is freest when the body is floating) and thought what might be most to the point, most helpful to you. [...]
In his 1981 classic After Virtue, Notre Dame philosophy professor Alasdair MacIntyre offers a provocative diagnosis of the modern condition. Rejecting the assumption that secular modernity is the culmination of centuries of improvement, MacIntyre contends that we live amidst the ruins of Western civilization. There can be no restoration of the past. Even so, MacIntyre [...]