Remember: we are pilgrims; we will not be here forever, but we are just passing through. Therefore, focus on the destination. Listen for God’s voice calling out to you in the silence of your heart. No Abiding City (republished by Cluny Media as part one of Returning to the Lord) by Bede Jarrett, O.P. Why is life [...]
Who says there are gods? Russell Amos Kirk does in “The Last God’s Dream,” a long, complicated tale that challenges us to reflect once again on both God’s agency and mercy. All of Russell Kirk’s stories have been grossly neglected over the years, so it would perhaps be redundant to describe “The Last God’s Dream” [...]
It's rare that an author billing his work as a piece of revisionism ends up, seemingly unwittingly, reinforcing the traditional interpretation of his subject. But Charles Leerhsen accomplishes this unusual feat in his biography, "Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty." Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty by Charles Leerhsen (464 pages, Simon & Schuster, 2015) It's rare [...]
Clearly, after God, it is to Monica his mother that Augustine owes everything. And he heaps upon every memory he has of her, of the great goodness of her life and example, all possible praise. It has long been a commonplace among commentators of the Confessions that the first nine books are about Augustine’s ardent search for truth, [...]
Augustine passed on to us, and all posterity, prescient words of wisdom: that even in the most disconcerting and dark of times, beauty, compassion, truth, love, and happiness abound. When the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410, the city that had taken the world captive had fallen into captivity. The event was a transformative moment in [...]
Grief is a gift, not given for its own sake, but to lead us to an ever-deeper peace. It’s often said that saints beget saints. August 27th the Church honors Saint Monica, and the 28th Saint Augustine, her son. But what we now celebrate in joy Monica first sought with tears, with sorrow that begot [...]
Critical theorists seek to confuse concepts through the manipulation of language and promote ideas that fail to correspond to reality. Academic theories designed to confuse rather than to clarify must be confronted with calm reason. This is the most charitable thing we can do for those who will come after us. Self-evident Truths It can [...]
Salena Zito's new book is less the story of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, than it is the lengthier story of the 2024 campaign for the presidency. As such, it is also the story of the fight for a piece of America’s heartland, and for a key element of Mr. Trump's [...]
It is an intimate art, the translation business. But it is the art of creatures like we humans, who live always on the border of matter and spirit, trying to marry together the infinite and the finite, the spiritual and the earthly, the eternal and the temporal. On January 11, 1940, the Italian writer and [...]
When it comes to considering America’s greatest writers, it would be foolish to ignore Willa Cather as a contender. Indeed, it is quite possible that her 1925 novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop is the great American novel, rivaling anything that came before or since. Yet, Cather was consistent. While not at the level of Death Comes, her 1913 O Pioneers and [...]
AI pronouncements mine our natural hope for an impersonal truth, not by outlasting man like granite, but by appearing to not need him at all. In truth, however, we make the word-collating machines, they feed on our words, and we intervene into their operations in order to produce correct and pleasing results. But in appearance, [...]
By prayer, I do not just mean saying prayers or performing prayers of obligation but practising the deep prayer that leads onward beyond first beginnings into the mystic way. It is only here that we will come to know and experience the love that surpasses the understanding. When the constitution on the liturgy was promulgated [...]
Russell Hittinger’s new book, "On the Dignity of Society," articulates Catholic principles regarding the social order. One of the great themes of the book was the continuity between man’s nature and society. On the Dignity of Society by F. Russell Hittinger Is the history of philosophy full of philosophers rejecting past philosophers? Broadly, this may be [...]
No piece of classical music grips my ballet-dancer’s imagination like Aram Khachaturian’s “Waltz” from his Masquerade suite. Like his Piano Concerto that I wrote about HERE in 2017, it doesn’t start so much as drop the listener smack into a musical extravaganza, where the lines between listener and music have been erased and, oh Lord, I’m inside it and [...]