J.R.R. Tolkien was right: Fairy-stories do hold up a mirror to man. They show us ourselves: who we are, who we might become, and who we are called to be. To gaze into such a mirror is perilous; to fail to do so, is more perilous still. In his famous lecture and essay “On Fairy-Stories”, [...]
Our rights as Americans can never be separated from our duties. But we must also ask, what is our liberty for? We live in an age of determinism, especially when it comes to academics and academia. There’s little choice, it seems, and everything is driven by some autonomous and often abstract forces, progressively (often) and [...]
Conservatives must preserve and pass on the riches of the past, but we must also be aware of and open to the opportunities of the present, so that the proper fusion of old and new will inspire and enable truly great art. From time to time I publish on Twitter my view of the social [...]
Graham Greene classified his 1958 novel "Our Man in Havana" as one of his lighter pieces or “entertainments,” yet which allows for a surprising amount of spiritual substance. “The moral imagination is… man’s power to perceive ethical truth, abiding law, in the seeming chaos of many events.” –Russell Kirk In his book The Catholic Writer [...]
In the end, we can know who we are in light of what we are called to be, or we can know nothing because we believe that life is nothing and that it signifies nothing. It is the choice between life and death, and between the culture of life and the culture of death. Where [...]
We live in a time of gross lies in our public sphere. Many of the lies we tell these days involve phantom ills: racism or sexism or various “phobias” that must be exaggerated. Might these false and exaggerated fears be stand-ins for the real ills that we have suffered, but which we have not been [...]
Isn’t part of the problem in the culture at large a lack of the personal correction and encouragement that accompany truly being known to those around us? Don Rags sessions have an immediate effect on the behavior of students, as professors often notice, but they mean more than that. This kind of recognition helps personal [...]
Everything worth conserving is menaced in our generation. Mere unthinking negative opposition to the current of events, clutching in despair at what we still retain, will not suffice in this age. A conservatism of instinct must be reinforced by a conservatism of thought and imagination. A friend of mine, whom we shall call Miss Worth, fell [...]
As American society reaches its final stages of decay, the price of denying reality will prove ever greater, awakening people to their folly and ruin. A metaphysical crisis of vast proportions awaits a world that has long ignored existential questions to its peril. These are anti-metaphysical times. Most people don’t realize it because they know [...]
Indifferentism in religion only serves to weaken all religion, for when the dogma and the distinctive devotions go, all we are left with is a kind of vanilla-pudding spirituality. In his recent book The Return of the Strong Gods, Rusty Reno catalogues the concerted effort, after the Second World War, of philosophers, political thinkers, economists, and theologians [...]
"The Green Knight" is probably the best movie adaptation that we Christians could dare hope for from the modern world: well-researched, thoughtful, and meditative. Go see the film. Revel in its beauty. But use your Christian understanding to claim what you want from it so you may better serve Christ. The Green Knight is a [...]
Having imagined myself spending countless hours reading these ten specially selected tomes, it dawns on me that there are worse ways of spending one’s time than in solitary confinement, even with such a limited library. Last week I recorded a podcast for the “Inner Sanctum” of my personal website discussing “Ten Essential Books for My [...]
Fr. Paul Mankowski uses tough language at times, but he also conveys a great deal of wisdom. His diagnoses might seem abrupt to those to whom they apply, but the reader notices a genuine sympathy for those in the priesthood or denominational bureaucracies who have quite often sold their souls or allowed them to be [...]
We Americans must ask: Is the republic alive? Should we despair? Are things any better in A.D. 2022 than they were for Rome in 43 B.C.? It’s been a rambunctious (or insert the descriptive of your choice) year and a half. We’ve endured—sometimes nobly and sometimes sordidly—COVID; lock downs; race riots; the tearing down of [...]