Forgetting that there exists such a state as salutary dread, modern man has become spiritually foolhardy. The God-fearing man is rare. A Michigan farmer, some years ago, climbed to the roof of his silo, and there he painted, in great red letters that the Deity could see, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning [...]
It was there, in the first circle of Hell, that I first understood what it meant to be a virtuous pagan. It meant to be led by the dim but true light of reason, to seek continually after the higher things, to pursue with courage and devotion a life of virtue. Author’s Introduction: Imagine if [...]
Today the idea that the cultivation of manners should be an essential part of one’s education has been lost almost entirely. Proof of the demise of manners is all around us, and thus one of the main pillars of civilization is crumbling before us. On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee met General Ulysses [...]
Government remains limited in civil society because God gave man the ability, through work and reason, to subdue the earth and thereby improve his life by the use of private property. Understanding Locke John Locke is one of the few major philosophers who can be used to provide a theoretical and moral foundation for American [...]
Counting upon God’s grace, we must recognize and respect the organic nature of man, full of vivacity, spontaneity, and unpredictability. This is the essence of a truly organic—that is, living—society. An element of organic society involves the manner in which remedies are found. In searching for solutions, we must carefully observe the fact that organic [...]
We do have moral obligations and duties, and we should perform them conscientiously. But they serve a larger purpose; they are to build us up and make us fit for heaven—to make us happy. Angelic Virtues and Demonic Vices: Aquinas’s Practical Principles for Reaching Heaven and Avoiding Hell, by Fr. Basil Cole, OP (275 pages, [...]
The true statesman embodies in the depths of his soul the cardinal virtues—courage, temperance, prudence, justice—as well as a commitment to political liberty or self-government and a principled and passionate opposition to the negation of civilized life that is tyranny in its various forms. The founding fathers of modern republicanism had no qualms about appealing [...]
In a world where love is replaced with lust, the number of damsels in distress will increase. In such a world, we need to rescue our maidens from the dragons of the culture of death. In The Hobbit, Thorin Oakenshield gives Bilbo Baggins a beginner’s lesson on the nature of dragons, a sort of dragons for [...]
Though civil libertarians rightly point out the dangers of an unchecked government, they blissfully ignore the dangers of an unchecked, unrestrained populace. It is thus worthwhile to return to the founders and examine what role they desired religion and morality to play in their new Republic. The story goes that as Benjamin Franklin departed from [...]
In “Nicomachean Ethics,” Aristotle offers students a refreshing alternative to the instrumentality of modern life: the pursuit of goodness. Goodness inspires honor, and mutual honor is the stuff of friendships of virtue. These are the friendships which yield the greatest happiness. Recently, I had the great pleasure afforded by technology in our chaotic, pandemic times [...]
This Advent season does not center on our achievement; it is not the time of puffing ourselves up, but of waiting for God to reveal, as only God can, the new thing under the sun that breaks the great cycle of vanity. The greatest things are born from humility. There is something essentially comic about [...]
There is a supernatural dimension to the unfolding of events in Middle-earth, in which Tolkien shows the mystical balance that exists between the promptings of grace or of demonic temptation and the response of the will to such promptings and temptations. This mystical relationship plays itself out in the form of transcendent Providence, which is [...]
On Veterans Day, we honor our surviving warriors. We rightly give thanks to those who have sacrificed their personal peace for the survival of the nation. And we rededicate ourselves to fulfilling the pledge “to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.” War endures. The oldest [...]
What does courage actually look like? Why is it that many who can face mortal dangers in battle lack the other virtues? How do you account for a man like Cicero, whose voice trembled at the beginning of every speech and who never distinguished himself in battle, yet who stood up to Catiline and saved [...]