In the drama of the two brothers and the loving Father the heart of the Gospel is laid open before us. Human freedom and divine love are here. Human sinfulness in two of its more dramatic forms—dissipation and contemptuous pride—are on view. We are warned about the reality of sin and brought face to face [...]
Oh, dear sons of the twenty-first century, do not balk at those who call you to live up to your father’s reputation. Do not define yourself against him, as so many of your age have done. If you do, you will dash yourselves on the rocks and miss out on your greater calling. Author’s Introduction: [...]
To correct their superior, inferiors must invoke another superior—a superior superior. Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, or the golden rule, is an ideal of equality, as is the precept of loving your neighbor as yourself. In the highest view, we hope for humans to treat one another as equals. [...]
Turning the popular negative connotation of “orthodoxy” on its head, G.K. Chesterton argues that orthodoxy is anything but dull and musty, but on the contrary exciting and adventuresome. In 1952, C.S. Lewis did a great service to the world in producing Mere Christianity, his account of the fundamentals of Christian belief for a popular audience. It [...]
What makes a good priest and what are we to make of a bad priest? These questions are at the heart of two classic twentieth century novels, published just four years apart. The first, Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos, published in 1936, recounts the struggles of a young priest, newly appointed to [...]
William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” presents a dark vision that captures the mood of our age, when all seems to be disintegrating into chaos. His prophetic foresight is even more remarkable in that he sees the Sphinx-like beast rising from the deserts of the East. While the world spins forward in what seems [...]
When it comes to our role in salvation, St. Augustine sits squarely between the heretical extremes of Luther and Pelagius. A large mug arrived in the mail the other day, around which I counted twenty or so apothegms written by St. Augustine. It was a gift, anonymously sent by someone who obviously thought I wasn’t getting [...]
One may have had low expectations when his television show began in 1951, to put it mildly. The former radio broadcaster worked without a teleprompter or cue cards or referring to written notes, with only a blackboard for a prop, alone without guests or so much as a chair, delivering an almost full thirty-minute unscripted [...]
What kind of education would enable a child to progress in the rational understanding of the world without losing his poetic and artistic appreciation of it? Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education by Stratford Caldecott (178 pages, Angelico Press, 2012) Stratford Caldecott’s Beauty in the Word is like no book in the genre of [...]
David Horowitz has been an unrelenting fighter and a happy warrior, and has had his fair share of tribulations. But never has he succumbed to a sense of victimhood. There were always too many good people to appreciate, and when he was young, a world to save, and as he grew older and wiser, warnings [...]
Though she was a far greater novelist than G.K. Chesterton, Sigrid Undset's apologetic essays were certainly Chestertonian. And she loved his work. The story is that she once slammed "The Everlasting Man" on an editor’s desk, declaiming: “This is the best book ever written. It has to be translated into Norwegian!” 2024 was a year [...]
In “Shop Class as Soulcraft,” Matthew B. Crawford tells a story of diminishment, outlining how we went from a nation of independent tradesmen, farmers, and shop keepers to cubicle dwellers. I am not a fan of Ask This Old House, the spin-off of the PBS home improvement program, This Old House. Formerly the companion series to [...]
Timothy Carney’s "Alienated America" tackles a crucial question that too few policymakers and news commentators even bother asking anymore: What is at the root of America’s contemporary cultural and social malaise? The short answer, according to Mr. Carney, is the deterioration of civil society. Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Other Places Collapse, by [...]
The right music can have a calming effect on babies. Thus, some have claimed that serene passages of classical music should be played to babies as part of their formation. However, it is not Mozart who affects infants the most. The soothing tone of a loving mother is much more effective. A recent study by [...]