Eva Brann’s contributions to the larger academic community are twofold: She gives her students, colleagues, and readers a sweeping variety of writings and offers herself as a model of one who never shies from thinking, discussing, and seeking knowledge; and she is a tireless defender of the educational practices at St. John’s College, where she [...]
Rather than covet what we do not have, let us be grateful for the gifts and the traditions that have been passed down to us. Though he does not say so specifically, what Jordan Peterson ultimately calls upon modern, autonomous, post-Enlightenment individuals to do is to heed the commandment to honor one’s father and mother. [...]
With America in great need of political and intellectual warriors to fight for our “Constitutional morality,” what better man to learn from as one prepares for battle than Willmoore Kendall. Heaven Can Indeed Fall: The Life of Willmoore Kendall, by Christopher H. Owen (256 pages, Lexington Books, 2021) More than 50 years after his death, [...]
Good translations are crucial since they make accessible what would otherwise require years of study. The problem, of course, lies in what is lost in the process turning one language into another. One of the funniest scenes in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream comes in the woods outside Athens when Bottom the Weaver first begins [...]
Relishing a challenge, the following is a snapshot in a thousand words of the full panorama of two thousand years of English history. I am currently writing a series for Crisis Magazine in which I put the great works of literature in the proverbial nutshell. The idea of the series is to distill and encapsulate [...]
Robert Frost seemed stubbornly—even querulously—conservative, but it is often the case that he dramatizes political realities most shrewdly and profoundly in poems that never mention politics in the conventional sense. Shortly before the death of Robert Frost, the editor of a selection of critical essays on the poet summarized the case for his prosecution as [...]
The movie "Amadeus" is a wondrous meditation, through the reminiscences of Antonio Salieri, on the ways of genius, the value of contrition, and the arbitrariness of metaphysical justice. "Amadeus" opened the door to a fantastic world of whose existence I had not been aware. The movie changed my life. " —Anonymous viewer of the film [...]
John Henry Newman owned a “long view,” especially in relation to the development of Christian doctrine over the centuries. Much lesser known, and fitting nicely with his doctrinal works, are two novels which own equal importance for Newman scholars: the semi-autobiographical "Loss and Gain," and the historical romance "Callista." Now it must be observed that [...]
I’m fascinated by time—its past, its present, its future, its moments, its transcendences. Time, as we’ve all experienced, moves quickly at points, and agonizingly slow at other points. There is something quite mystical about the nature of time and something truly mystical in the relationship of time to eternity. A few months ago, the history [...]
When the headlines scream that a politician or church leader is being “divisive,” and the thought police, educators, and culture warriors demand “inclusivity,” it should cause a pause for thought. What exactly is “inclusivity” and what causes division? Inclusivity is the desire and demand for a unity (and therefore peace) in a nation or population. [...]
Irrespective of what we might feel about the evil of war, or the evil we see in our neighbours, is it right to treat the plight of our fellow men with indifference, as the American poet, Sara Teasdale, does in "There Will Come Soft Rains”? And in her poem, is Teasdale exhibiting the same failure [...]
For Irving Babbitt, a saving remnant of those who possess a humane understanding of the West and its great men and great ideas existed—one that could counter the nationalists and internationalists and those promoting either leviathan or the superman. In the 1910s, one of America’s greatest humanists, Irving Babbitt (1865-1933), surprisingly decided to dive into [...]
To study the past requires a sense of tragedy and perhaps a belief in original sin, “the imagination of disaster” as Henry James called it. The celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, our annual exercise in national amnesia and self-congratulation, by contrast, promotes the myth that “all’s well that ends well.” Only the most [...]
Motherhood and any kind of public service or career are seen as a binary choice for many women. Many women have now agreed that “you can’t have it all” and have decided that the thing to sacrifice is the motherhood. But is the choice true? Kathryn Rombs, Motherhood: An Extraordinary Vocation (176 pages, Our Sunday [...]