In the 1950s, Robert Nisbet summarized the effects of nineteenth-century individualism on modern humans in the book The Quest for Community: “[Nineteenth-century] individualism has resulted in masses of normless, unattached, insecure individuals who lose even the capacity for independent, creative living.” His brutally honest assessment is only more true today; our public universities are busy [...]
“I did it my way,” crooned Sinatra. Donald Trump is echoing Ol’ Blue Eyes with the latest additions to his staff. Should he lose, he prefers to go down to defeat as Donald Trump, and not as some synthetic creation of campaign consultants. “I am who I am,” Mr. Trump told a Wisconsin TV station, “It’s [...]
In a recent essay I noted that tradition is not self-contained or absolute. It’s complex, so that superior, subordinate, and parallel traditions often come into conflict. Local tradition may say one thing, Church or national tradition quite another. Also, tradition is not about itself but about goods toward which it’s oriented, so it’s relative to something higher, [...]
A brief examination of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon, Watchmen (DC/Warner Brothers, 1986); The Art of the Film: Watchmen (Titan Books, 2009); and Zack Snyder, Watchmen (Ultimate Cut; Warner Brothers, 2009) Who watches the watchmen, who guards the guardians? […]
Editor’s Note: This essay was originally given as a talk to participants in Wyoming Catholic College’s PEAK camp. I hope you all enjoyed your summer camp at Wyoming Catholic College, what we call PEAK (Powerful Experience of Adventure and Knowledge): stimulating classes on dialectic, astronomy, theology, humanities, and philosophy; wonderful outdoor adventures repelling and horseback riding; [...]
Here is the grand fact that Protestant theologians always overlook. They, in reality, always present nature and grace as two antagonistic powers, and suppose the presence of the one must be the physical destruction of the other. Luther and Calvin, weary of the good works, and shrinking from the efforts to acquire the personal virtues [...]
Peter Kalkavage's The Logic of Desire presents an exemplary attitude for a reader to adopt toward a book. To use a fancy term, it embodies a “hermeneutic,” a principle of interpretation. The most respectful such hermeneutic rule I know is the so-called “principle of charity:” give the text a chance to make maximum sense. Mr. [...]
It has long been my passion (and, I believe, also my calling) to serve as a catalyst for a new Christian cultural revival in the English-speaking world. In this sense, it could be said that I am striving to be what might be called a “catalytic converter” of the culture. Thanks be to God, there [...]
On September 30, the end of fiscal year 2016, the national debt is projected to reach $19.3 trillion. With spending on the four biggest budget items—Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, defense—rising, and GDP growing at one percent, future deficits will exceed this year’s projected $600 billion. National bankruptcy, then, is among the existential threats to the republic, the [...]
We encounter all too often in our modern world the spectacular violence of such escapades as the Misfit’s murder of an anonymous family on a Georgia back road. Our daily press is full of such incidents. Its corollary, however, O’Connor expects us to come to through reflection. It is well to be reminded again and [...]
Recent weeks have seen angry charges leveled at both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Key among these have been claims against both candidates that they are unworthy of the people’s trust. The implication is that each would be liable to abuse the powers of the presidency. Some might find in such charges a sad lack [...]
Demonstrations that are political possess a tendency to be governed by loudness and force rather than by reflection and thought, and thus bear the shrill dictates of power instead of being willing servants to truth. And above all, we should remember that there is simply no point in winning the argument if we know we [...]
Old-World nihilism belongs to a handful of intellectuals persuaded by philosophical arguments that human knowledge, on the whole, is worthless as a reliable guide for living. Consider Heinrich von Kleist, the nineteenth century dramatist and short-story writer, who became intellectually unglued when he read Immanuel Kant’s The Critique of Pure Reason. In a letter to [...]
Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room; And hermits are contented with their cells; And students with their pensive citadels; Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom, Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom, High as the highest Peak of Furness Fells, Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells: [...]