When purification is complete mystics enter immediately into the Mystical Marriage with Christ, often called the Transforming Union. It is then that for the first time they are able to experience the continual contemplation of God that Jesus experienced at every moment of his life on earth. When I was a small boy, I used [...]
Robert Hugh Benson's "The King’s Achievement" does what good historical fiction should do: it renders a complex historical situation justly and it brings characters to life in a story that is interesting for its own sake. On October 31, 1904, Robert Hugh Benson wrote his mother that he had just finished his novel on Henry [...]
The Mosaic Church (2025) is an engaging new documentary film about an extraordinary archeological discovery of recent times. In 2004, excavators renovating a prison near the ancient city of Megiddo in northern Israel came across a mosaic floor that, as soon became apparent, originally covered the floor of a Christian worship hall in Roman times. [...]
Beauty has an important place in the central activities of Catholic education. Learning requires discipline but deep down is a feast for the mind and heart. “Too late have I loved Thee, O Beauty, ever ancient, ever new!” St. Augustine was in his forties by the time he penned this personal lament. As readers of [...]
Like the person who ascends out of Plato’s cave, you too are now obliged to go back down and help others to ascend, to draw others from shadows and images into the truth. Who raises the bar? The servant of others. Many have raised it for you, but you are challenged to go forth to [...]
Propelled into Supreme Command, and without ever having commanded in battle, Dwight Eisenhower was put into an almost impossible situation, having to meet the demands of his battlefield subordinates while satisfying the conflicting expectations and orders of his masters, both military and political. Eisenhower at War, 1943-1945, by David Eisenhower (977 pages, Random House, 1986). [...]
Though eventually martyred for his selfless and Grace-filled efforts, St. Boniface succeeded in creating what we would now recognize as the beginnings of Europe: a synthesis of the classical, Christian, and Germanic. So, please, raise a glass to St. Boniface on his feast day, and to the many monks of history who helped build Western [...]
Ronald Reagan was truly a great president who led our nation through a critical period in our history, demonstrating tenacity, courage and faith. He faced down an enemy and never blinked. He inspired Americans to look to our better angels and reminded us that we hold the potential within us to do great things, with [...]
The solution to the problem of modern elitism is not the elimination of leadership but its reformation—the cultivation of stewardship elitism that positions leaders as servants of civilization rather than its masters. In a recent essay for The Free Press titled "Our elites don't deserve this much hatred," economist Tyler Cowen makes a characteristic defense of [...]
Walking down a busy city street, it can be easy to let strangers pass around you without giving them a second thought. Everyone is going about their business, caught up in their daily tasks. But have you ever walked past someone who, for whatever reason, catches your attention? Who are they? Where are they going? [...]
In his excellent memoir, Georgetown Law Center Professor Randy Barnett reveals what he has long maintained: “There will never come a time when our liberty is permanently secured, but there may well come a time when our liberty is permanently lost.” A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist, by Randy Barnett (635 [...]
Today Europe is rich and weak. This is the most dangerous combination! This is why we must first of all strengthen Europe. We have historical experience of what a strong Europe looks like. The glorious era in Europe’s history began with nation states, which have made it successful for centuries. This speech by Prime Minister [...]
Each of us needs to be living courageously in goodness, truth and beauty, remembering at all times that sanity and sanctity are ultimately synonymous. With respect to literature, we need to preserve and promote the legacy of Christendom, of Christian Civilization, by promoting the reading and teaching of the Great Books. Robert Lazu Kmita interviews [...]
The irony of the prosperous decade of the 1950s is that the most popular person on the most visible proof of that prosperity—television—was a Catholic Bishop: "America’s Bishop," Fulton J. Sheen, who rejected feel-good, dishwater Christianity and instead boldly proclaimed the truth to his audience, 70% of whom were non-Catholic. Happiness, says the wicked Ambrose [...]