Plato wrote his Allegory of the Cave about the journey from ignorance to true philosophy, but I think his allegory fits another journey even better: the journey of the Christian life. Plato tells a curious story in his Republic. It goes like this: Many people are chained up, head to toe, in the deepest, darkest part [...]
We have handicapped children by letting our concern for their safety overrule the enormous benefits that come with the way they naturally play. Last semester, some of our faculty recently participated in on-site CPR training on a Saturday morning. And again, this semester, on a Friday evening. Aside from the comfort you should derive knowing [...]
As I read Matthew Crawford's "Why We Drive," I was struck by the book, not so much as an ode to awesome driving— which it is—but as a long observation of two modes of being in the world, two political stances that I have increasingly come to identify as Liberalism and Catholicism. Why We Drive: [...]
When I was eight years old I had an experience that set a trajectory for my whole life. I was lying in bed, I had the radio on—this was the 1970s—and Bruce Springsteen comes on with his 70s anthem “Born to Run.” Something broke open in my soul. Something grabbed a hold of me and [...]
If spiritual poverty is not to sink on the one hand into resentment or nihilism, on the other into a greedy enjoyment—and in either event into despair—two enormous and closely connected truths must dominate it: first, that God transcends the world, and second, that happiness is not to be found on earth. Poverty, by Pie-Raymond [...]
By the grace of faith our intellect recognizes the truth of the words of Christ and affirms the dogma of the Real Presence. By faith we see that Truth himself speaks truly when he says, "This is my body... this is my blood." This past July was an interesting month for the Eucharist. Many thousands of [...]
Bartolomé de Las Casas is an unsung hero who wanted to convert the pagan Native Americans to Christ as well as stop the sinful aspects of the European conquest of the New World. Ever since the advent of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s myth of the “noble savage” in the eighteenth century, there has been a tendency to idealize [...]
What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? (Rom 8:35) In this line from the epic eighth chapter of Romans, Paul supplies a laundry-list of circumstances that might at first seem to remove us from Christ’s love but in [...]
It seems to me that solitude is the natural habitat of the philosophical and imaginative conservative today. He is essentially one who is “unfit for the modern world,” an antiquated being devoted to impossible ideals like Don Quixote. In order for him to remain himself, he must enter into communion with like-minded souls—or, failing that, [...]
There is something immoderate about Sibelius’ Violin Concerto—something vulnerable and unspeakably beautiful, right there along something dark and brooding. The piece illustrates that not only do darkness and beauty coexist, they enhance each other. It’s complex, gripping, devilishly complicated, and sounds like no other concerto in the violin repertoire. Listening to Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’ violin concerto, [...]
Concluding the quest for the ideal classical literature curriculum, we find ourselves entering the senior year and, simultaneously, entering the period of modernity. The freshmen had been immersed in pre-Christian Greece and Rome, the sophomores in the Christian Middle Ages, and the juniors in the early modern period with William Shakespeare. Now, as students enter [...]
By enshrining the principle of religious freedom in Maryland’s constitution, Charles Carroll hoped to better the prospects of Catholics like himself. Indeed, he saw toleration as the only logical policy for governments to adopt. Designing and selfish men invented religious tests to exclude from posts of profit and trust their weaker or more conscientious fellow [...]
We have the makings of one, and it explains a lot of what’s going on. It is not yet complete. Clearly, a major political realignment is underway in this country. The defection of RFK, Jr. to the Trump campaign and the decision of Dick Cheney to join his daughter in voting for Kamala Harris is [...]
Unlike reality—which is infinitely and ultimately unknowable—Marxism as ideology pretends to understand the world, but, in reality, it offers only the merest shadow of true complexities. Though responsible—directly and indirectly—for the murder of nearly 150 million innocent children, women, and men in the previous century, Marxism is making a comeback in Western civilization. Not only [...]