Russell Kirk’s horror stories are fundamentally conservative, insinuating a chain of being that connects the living and the dead, reminding us of our duty and obligations to the past. They challenge us by piercing our day-to-day sense of the temporal with bright flashes of eternal order. And they lay upon us the heavy but joyous [...]
Having surveyed the liturgical presence in Medieval and Early Modern literature in my two previous essays, we’ll continue our survey with a review of some of the liturgical highlights in the literature of the modern age. A good place to begin would be the early years of the Catholic literary revival which could be said [...]
Evil is real. It is unjust and is totally against our nature. Just as the creepiness of Halloween tries to claim all of October, evil tries to creep beyond its bounds, but it is crushed by the dawn of All Saints, under the banner of Christ. Whether you prefer the RSV translation “I will make [...]
There was a time, a far healthier time, when the heroism of those who defended Malta from the Islamic onslaught was lauded by the whole Christian world. Jean Parisot de Valette All saints are heroes, but not all heroes are saints. There are some who have made great sacrifices for Christendom while not [...]
It is not surprising that in the political field, the traditional form of Christianity has not accepted the logical conclusions of that democracy which asserts that man can do what he likes, since there is no power greater than man. In that sense, Catholicism has never been democratic in spirit. The Persistence of Order, Volume [...]
The Office is a service offered to the whole Church. As religious, we consecrate ourselves to God and make an offering of our lives in order to strive to become perfect in charity. Since the Office is the public prayer of the Church, the whole world benefits when it is prayed with reverence. Forma Vitae: [...]
Don Larsen didn’t know he was going to start that fifth game of the 1956 World Series until he arrived at Yankee Stadium and discovered a baseball tucked inside his baseball spikes. Shapes of Philosophical History Mr. Meyer passed away late spring in 1956 leaving behind his wife and one child, a son, Curtis, who [...]
The novel "Salem’s Lot" proves that Stephen King is both a first-rate storyteller and a top-notch writer, who is especially good when describing the imagination of a child and the child’s ability to see things the adult no longer can. But is it a great work of horror? On November 17, 1979, two months after [...]
The Duke of Wellington was an exemplar of an older England—an England bound by blood, not interest. He affirmed the very English equality of manhood, which comes with honorable service in the line, the rule that he who is with the king on St. Crispin’s Day shall be by him called “brother.” The Great Duke, [...]
One of the most heinous crimes against humanity that modernity has perpetrated is its war on the humanities. And let’s not forget that the humanities are thus called because they teach us about our own humanity. A failure to appreciate the humanities must inevitably lead to the dehumanizing of culture and a disastrous loss of [...]
To what extent Colonel Edward House’s novel "Philip Dru" contributed to the Wilsonian transformation of the Democratic party will likely never be known. But we do know that Woodrow Wilson read the book, brought House to the White House, and relied on House for advice and companionship. Philip Dru: Administrator - A Story of Tomorrow, [...]
Ghost stories have been killed by a ghost—by the ghost in the machine of television, a murder not without irony. Hidden among the posh townhouses and expensive offices of Mayfair is the Savile Club, resembling a merry old English squire with threadbare cuffs. In the library upstairs above the black leather club-chairs, relics of the [...]
The best poems are always going to be about common things. What is uncommon is always the vision of the poet, made visible to us in words that skip along and yet find a way of stopping the reader so that he may examine his own path and think about new ones. Elizabeth Marshall's "Pathways: [...]
“Man is a beggar before God.” These words of the Church’s Catechism reveal something of our fundamental dependence on God. This need is perhaps nowhere better exemplified than in St. Luke’s account of the good thief. Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us.” The other, [...]