Understanding Henry James’ relationship to painting may very well unlock one of the keys to understanding the notoriously concealed prose style of the greatest of all English-language prose artists. There is no single way to read a writer as complex as Henry James. His novels are renowned as much for their psychological openness as for [...]
Western civilization has been gutted from within. At the core of this moral bankruptcy is a watered-down Christianity that lacks the conviction to defend itself… Today mankind enjoys unprecedented technology, but lacks the wisdom to regard technology as a tool in the service of life, and not an end in itself. The difference between the [...]
The soft totalitarian roots of Prime Minister Trudeau’s Liberal government are becoming increasingly transparent through its dismissing of the central truth that builds up society: the life of every person must be safeguarded and protected… Terezín. Auschwitz-Birkenau. Majdanek. Treblinka. These places of suffering, even their very names, signify what Eva Hoffman calls the “abrupt but [...]
There were pre-modern times when workers enjoyed broad prosperity and rights, thanks largely to the Church, which has long safeguarded and improved the state of workers and all society… In the quest for a golden age for workers, few would look beyond free markets in modern times. This position is backed up by economists using [...]
Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs Always wrong to the light, so never seeing Deeper down in the well than where the water Gives me back in a shining surface picture Me myself in the summer heaven godlike Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs. Once, when trying with chin [...]
We can approach the miracles and mysteries of the Bible, accepting the possibility of their essential historicity while allowing for elaboration, exaggeration, and the misunderstandings of the pre-scientific mind. I have had a terrific time researching and writing my new book The Mystery of the Magi—The Quest for the True Identity of the Three Wise [...]
The more silence can become a way of life in this noisy age, the more a new culture will radiate from its blessings… Last week I suggested that, despite the drift of Western culture, a time like ours can actually shelter a deep hope for renewal. The Catholic historian Christopher Dawson, with his long perspective, has [...]
The mystery is how one person whom I never met, through recountings down the ages of how many others whom I also have never met, could shed light on each other, eventually to enlighten me. In The Apology, Socrates brought up the question of whether he was paid for being a teacher, like the Sophists, who were paid [...]
It is hard, as a modern, to know the right questions to ask, to know when all questions fall silent in the presence of absolute Truth, of Revelation. In his final book, The Discarded Image, C.S. Lewis writes about the Mediaeval world view: “All the apparent contradictions must be harmonised. A Model must be built which [...]
The majority not only have no language to express anything save generalized man; they are for the most part unaware of themselves as anything but generalized men... I Eeldrop and Appleplex rented two small rooms in a disreputable part of town. Here they sometimes came at nightfall, here they sometimes slept, and after they had [...]
At some point during the 1958 International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, Nikita Khrushchev was asked whether it would be okay to give the prize to the American virtuoso, Van Cliburn. One of the most famous—and unexpected—lulls in the Cold War came when Texan Harvey Lavan Cliburn Jr. stepped off a plane in Moscow in April 1958. [...]
On the beach at night, Stands a child with her father, Watching the east, the autumn sky. Up through the darkness, While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading, Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky, Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east, Ascends large and [...]
To the men of Andrew Jackson’s era, the following or breaking of the rules of dueling signified much about one’s own character and what one thought of his opponent’s character. Once the two men agreed to having been satisfied in the duel, a strong friendship might resume. From the very origins of colonial America, public [...]
Conservatives must once again put contemplation before action, or else their energies will be wasted. They cannot continue to trim the upper branches of politics while the roots of culture wither and die from inattention… There is an aspect to the conservative abandonment of culture I find distressing: the increasing politicization within the conservative movement. [...]