The world lost a tremendously important voice on January 12, 2020, when Sir Roger Scruton passed away. Like all great artists and critics, his spirit lives on, and it is fitting that the great aesthetician and music scholar has bequeathed to the world a final—and fitting—contribution of cultural analysis, music criticism, and Wagnerian scholarship. In Wagner’s … Read more
Did Jesus legitimize the concept of a secular state? Many people, including well-intentioned Christians in today’s polite society, seem to think so. The “proof-text” they point to is Christ’s famous retort in St. Matthew’s Gospel, “render unto to Caesar that which is Caesar’s, but render unto God that which is God’s.” Yet a closer examination, … Read more
The negation of Mary is directly linked to the anti-feminine, anti-maternal, and anti-family nihilism that grips us today. Long a stumbling block for Protestants, Mary is increasingly rejected and mocked in the godless, death-infatuated cultures that stand strongest in formerly Protestant, but now almost entirely atheistic, lands. The story of Mary, however, helps bring to … Read more
Western civilization is weak, exhausted, dying. Our leaders in the Church – servants in attendance to the Great Physician – can now think of nothing to do but preach this thing they call “mercy.” There is nothing wrong with mercy, of course; but when our clerics use the word, they sound more like hospice nurses … Read more
“Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy.” The opening words to Homer’s Odyssey are among the most famous and recognizable in Western literature. That beginning stanza captures so much of the human condition and … Read more
“For God, For Country, and for Yale.” This phrase is etched into the stone arches that dot the landscape of Yale University. Yale, though founded by the Puritans for the purpose of missionary training, Christian education, and familiarity with the humanities and Biblical languages, has fallen far away from its original mission. This is nothing … Read more
Man is not a body of mass in motion with the aim of peaceable consumption as modern anthropology suggests. Man does not live on bread alone; man is, as the ancients knew, a social animal. However, the great revelation of Christian anthropology is that man is also a cultural animal. Culture, rooted in the Latin … Read more
“In This House, We Believe: Black Lives Matter, Women’s Rights Are Human Rights, No Human Is Illegal, Science Is Real, Love is Love, Kindness Is Everything.” These are the words plastered on many signs that dot the landscape of lawns across America, but especially in and around liberal enclaves. It is interesting to note that … Read more
As Easter comes ever closer the importance of the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ should be magnified for every Christian. Christians should not forget the underlying message of the Easter story—the freedom won in Christ’s death and resurrection. For this is one of two major competing stories in modernity, and one that modernity would … Read more
What is civilization and why is it important? Civilization is many things, but at its heart, it is both the inheritance of societal ideas, customs, and traditions which inform the body, and it is how that body is structurally organized based on that inheritance coupled with the ongoing changes of socio-political development. Western civilization, for … Read more
In this season of the Church calendar the Rosary should loom large for every Catholic. Nativity imagery will abound at all churches depicting the birth of Christ in the manger. But the importance of Mary within the story of the incarnation of Christ is something that is deeply important which is, of course, captured through … Read more
Modern man is at a precipice. We all know it. The yearning for something more than empty selves, fleeting friendships, the “joyless quest for joy,” and a desire for the sublime are all indicative of the dimly lit flame St. Augustine says remains in us even after the Fall. Like Aristophanes’s separated man we are … Read more
One of the recurrent themes throughout St. Augustine’s Confessions is the nature of beauty and how beauty leads Augustine toward truth, goodness, and wisdom. Beauty is a gateway to truth, and no one better reflected this in his writings than Augustine. The rejection of beauty in our contemporary society, including from within the Church, has … Read more
I am a humanist, but not that kind of humanist. Humanism is a term that gets thrown around a lot these days—but like most terms that once had a strong philosophical foundation, humanism has been so thoroughly detached from its philosophical substance it is another empty term in public consciousness. That said, it is an … Read more
There are many serious problems facing moderns, but one of the most troubling—and worrying—is the loss and degradation of beauty, not just in the arts, but in society as a whole. Classical Greek philosophy, to which Catholic philosophy largely inherited and preserved, maintained that beauty and morality were intertwined with one another. When Christianity began … Read more
The stone and marble arches that dot Yale’s landscape can sometimes transport you back in time. Athens. Rome. Or even Jerusalem. Etched on the arched gates of the many residential colleges read the words, “For God, For Country, and For Yale.” It is surprising that the inscriptions still stand today. Over the past six months … Read more