The Genuine Epidemic of Street Harassment

By |2014-12-10T12:24:39-06:00December 19th, 2014|Categories: Culture, Feminism, Sexuality|Tags: |

A multitude of people saw the YouTube video, or read the story in the news, about the actress who took part in a planned, secretly filmed ten-hour walk through Manhattan that—as expected—resulted in a substantial number of comments, catcalls, winks and what not from men she passed. The filming was arranged by an organization that [...]

Should the Church Be Involved in Politics?

By |2014-12-12T15:12:49-06:00December 12th, 2014|Categories: Catholicism, Politics|Tags: , |

For more than 1500 years the Church was a major influence on Western politics. That is how it should be. Ultimate standards matter, and if the Church does not explain what they are and how to apply them someone else will. It is not an improvement when her authority gives way to that of journalists, [...]

Demeaning Stay-at-Home Mothers

By |2014-12-05T14:15:50-06:00December 5th, 2014|Categories: Barack Obama, Catholicism|Tags: |

President Obama’s remarks on October 31 to Rhode Island College were pro-women, at least according to some. He spoke of the need for equal pay for equal work, for increased career opportunities for women and improved leave policies for working parents who needed to take care of a sick child. All of these promises, no [...]

Taking Offense and Seeking Truth

By |2020-04-08T04:22:55-05:00November 2nd, 2014|Categories: Christianity, Culture, Truth|Tags: |

Taking offense certifies the modern man as one who cares. If we take offense on behalf of another, we can number ourselves among the sensitive and loving. If we take offense personally, we can brandish a stop sign declaring to all that the offense must cease. In either case, the offending words must stop and [...]

Regensburg, Truth & Appeasement: Benedict XVI as Prophet

By |2023-02-10T18:43:36-06:00September 13th, 2014|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Communio, Pope Benedict XVI, World War II|Tags: |

If a prophet is not without honor save in his own country, a great prophet is not without honor save in the whole world. Pope Benedict XVI bent under that mantle in 2006 when he spoke in Regensburg. His only miscalculation was to assume that civilization might still be civil enough to respect reason. There [...]

Is Ugly the New Beautiful?

By |2014-08-26T14:49:06-05:00August 27th, 2014|Categories: Beauty, Culture|Tags: , |

Summer has become a season of strange and stark irony. While it brings forth the beauty of the world, it also brings forth the ugliness of the age. The warmth and light are invariably attended by trashy fashion and tattooed flesh. These dog-days, there is hardly a street or a store without people who appear [...]

A Defense of the Grotesque in Flannery O’Connor’s Art

By |2022-04-28T11:55:48-05:00August 14th, 2014|Categories: Art, Catholicism, Christianity, Flannery O'Connor, Modernity, South|Tags: |

Art is the pulse of the soul. It expresses much of what is kept hidden and even what could not be expressed in any other form. Many people talk of a crisis in modern art—its abstractness, banality, and, could we even say, ugliness. If there is such a crisis, to me, it is nothing other [...]

How to Form a Real Conscience

By |2022-09-03T09:51:14-05:00June 9th, 2014|Categories: Anthony Esolen, Christianity, Equality, Featured, Ideology, Liberal Learning, Religion|Tags: |

“For all I am of poet,” says the stranger to the two men climbing the mountain of Purgatory, the Aeneid was my mama and my nurse; without it, all my work weighs not a dram. And I’d content to spend an extra year— could I have lived on earth when Virgil lived— suffering for my [...]

How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization

By |2022-07-23T21:23:33-05:00April 17th, 2014|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Catholicism, Christianity, Western Civilization|Tags: , |

As much as a Catholic might want to embrace Thomas Woods’ thesis that the Church built Western Civilization, one must pause at such a statement. Rather than having built or having destroyed Western civilization, the Church sanctified what it found and gave the West new life. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, by Thomas [...]

Obama’s “Right to Worship” Ushers in New State Religion

By |2017-07-31T23:48:19-05:00March 20th, 2014|Categories: Barack Obama, Christianity, Fr. James Schall, Religion, Thomas Jefferson|Tags: |

The constitutions or laws of many nations provide for what is called “religious liberty.” In practice, this liberty is under severe restrictions in numerous countries, if it exists at all. The fact is that no one can really talk about religious freedom without examining what the “religion” holds. Grace builds on nature but does not contradict [...]

Quality Education is Not Rocket Science

By |2016-02-12T15:28:13-06:00March 16th, 2014|Categories: Anthony Esolen, Christianity, Classical Education, Education, Featured|Tags: |

Every week it seems I receive three or four letters from people who are establishing new schools or reforming old ones. These letters are most encouraging, and all of the writers, without exception, are dedicated to restoring what is called a “classical” education. Sometimes that implies the study of the true classics, the literature of ancient [...]

The Coming Demographic Winter

By |2014-03-03T17:43:20-06:00March 3rd, 2014|Categories: Culture, Family|Tags: , , |

Tourism, as anyone with a passport can tell you, has become a very big business, particularly in places that no longer thrive in the customary practices of industry and commerce. Take Genoa, for instance, one of Europe’s largest cities along the Mediterranean coast and still the grandest seaport in all Italy, whose bright and shiny brochures [...]

Sir Francis Walsingham: Bring Me the Head of Maria Stuarda

By |2014-02-19T17:29:33-06:00February 19th, 2014|Categories: Catholicism, History|Tags: , |

Sir Francis Walsingham The thought of a new book, from a proverbially establishmentarian imprint, on Elizabeth I’s spymaster is not one that immediately gladdens the heart. Anyone who has actually been expected to spend time in modern England – rather than simply viewing it through a Downton-Abbey-generated haze – knows perfectly well that [...]

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