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 [...]
While being the salt of the earth requires the Gift of Knowledge, being the light of the world requires the movements of the Gift of Counsel: the gift of knowing when and how to intervene, of when to echo the words of Jesus and when to emulate His silence. Matthew 5: 13-16 sees Jesus deliver [...]
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, [...]
Under what conditions is an aggressive war justified as punishment for a violation of the international order or as a redress for an injury suffered? Defensive war offers fewer problems. We have already pointed out that the justice of the cause of war must be certain for the public authority. Hence, the other party, in the dispute is [...]
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 [...]
The one thing that unites man with his most ancient of ancestors and which divides him from all other creatures is his status as a sub-creator, as the imago Dei, who uses his imagination to create in the image of the Creator Himself. Art is the signature of man. —G.K. Chesterton G.K. Chesterton begins his [...]
“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 [...]
Romantic love is a great thing, but not the greatest thing. Without covenant love, eros becomes a god, then a demon, and finally a fire that burns those who refuse to give it a home. Instead, pursue the greater love of—and love for—the Lord. Valentine’s Day beckons, our annual corporate celebration of eros, even though [...]
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 [...]
Why do our lives happen this way or that? Are they meaningless? For four thousand winters Adam lay bound, bound by death, bound in death. So the medieval English hymn Adam lay ybounden has it. Not much is known about the hymn other than the parchment it is preserved on and speculations of its provenance. That is enough for our [...]
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 [...]
So, then, what is Christian Culture? What does it look like? Are there certain defining features that distinguish it from what passes for culture these days? And if so, how are we to recognize them? What it is, at the deepest level, is an answer to the question raised by the Hebrew psalmist in a [...]
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 [...]