What does one do when faced with obvious and widespread wickedness? Are there protocols to consult that enable one precisely to know what ethical course of action to take? And how do these protocols work when so many of one’s own countrymen seem not to have noticed, or particularly to care, that awful things are … Read more
The time was 1941, the war then raging across Europe had entered its third terrible year, and a young Catholic philosopher by the name of Josef Pieper had just brought out a book, a lovely little thing of less than sixty pages, called A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart. Amazingly enough, … Read more
“Where shall the word be found, where will the word Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence…” ∼ T.S. Eliot, Ash-Wednesday One of the truly awful torments of modern life, from whose myriad aggressions no one is entirely safe, is noise. More and more, it fills the space that was once marked by that silence … Read more
It was during the great slugfest of 1968, which marked the beginning of a fierce and protracted battle for the soul of America, that I threw my first electoral punch. Doing my bit, you might say, to help Richard Nixon deliver the necessary knockout blow to the Democrats. Here (I thought) was the Party of … Read more
“In my beginning is my end.” ∼ T.S. Eliot In a passage often cited from the Pensees, which the author sets down in grim and graphic detail, Pascal summons the reader to reflect on the awful finality of death. “The last act is bloody,” he tells us, “however fine the rest of the play. … Read more
When we consider the Christmas Miracle, it is worth recalling the fact that Joseph does not at once repudiate his betrothed, despite his discovery that she is pregnant with another’s child. It is an astonishing development. How painfully bewildering it must have been for him, however, to try and account for a conception for which … Read more
“Legislation is helpless against the wild prayer of longing.” ∼ L. H. Auden “I did not know my longing until I encountered You.” ∼ CL Hymn The desire for God is a drive as deep as it is indestructible. There can be no other longing as profound or pervasive. And on the strength of … Read more
“Do not conform yourselves to this age.” ∼ St. Paul, Letter to the Romans (12:2) Living in a world where much has been laid waste by forces hostile to faith and hope, the challenge becomes that of finding evidence for the things that one loves. Or simply going mad in the face of all … Read more
It has become the fashion among the wise and the clever, and most everyone else these days itching to be trendier than thou, to dismiss all the miracle stories of the New Testament on the grounds that such fantasy food is fit only for fools and simpletons. A German scholar by the name of Rudolf … Read more
“The Holy Spirit is fire; whoever does not want to be burned should not come near him.” ∼ Pope Benedict XVI From the earliest moments of Christian existence, organized and sustained by a Church born from the side of Christ as he hung upon the Cross, there appeared a body of catechesis containing everything we … Read more
Growing up Catholic at a time when everything you needed to know to save your soul was presumptively understood by everybody, there was never any excuse for those of us who fell short or missed the mark. Having been carefully coached by legions of dedicated priests and nuns, where would the wiggle room be when … Read more
Why has it become so maddeningly difficult to make judgments about other people? About the actions especially of people who want to kill us? Indeed, whose stated aim is to bring the Great Satan (i.e., America) to its knees, and then to cut off its collective head? Is it too much of a stretch to … Read more
Never such innocence again. — Philip Larkin, MCMXIV By the time the Armistice ending the Great War was signed 11 November 1918—the Guns of August having at last fallen silent—four bloody years of lethal destruction had elapsed, leaving the Old European Order in ruins, its pretensions shattered beyond recall. In the bitter aftermath of disillusion … Read more
When U.S. photojournalist Jim Foley, following nearly two years of close captivity by the terrorist thugs of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), was finally and gruesomely decapitated—a video of his execution having been posted online—the bereaved family received the usual outpouring of sympathy and support from a civilized world outraged by this … Read more
Shortly before taking leave of this world, Sir Winston Churchill, who had lived a very long and illustrious life, was reportedly asked about the state of his soul: “I am perfectly ready,” he said, “to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.” Only someone of … Read more
Her life bore such eloquence of pain that when she left it—August 3, 1964—her friend Thomas Merton could recall no other writer of the last century to compare her with. Rather, he said, she summoned the voice of Sophocles: an artist whose vision had likewise reached into the dark places of the human heart, there … Read more
What are poems for? Is there any real point in writing them? And what about us, the folks who are expected to buy all that bilge—is it quite necessary that we actually read all that bleeping poetry? Exercising his customary acuity, C.S. Lewis tells us that poems exist to remind us that water is wet … Read more
In his lovely little book on the Mysteries of the Virgin Mary, a rare treasure trove of Catholic theology and prayer, Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P., distinguished Editor-in-Chief of Magnificat, reminds us that the first Corpus Christi procession took place when Our Lady journeyed into the hill country to visit her cousin Elizabeth. “The Blessed … Read more
When Groucho Marx announced that he would never want to join a club that would have someone like him as a member, it obviously hadn’t crossed his mind that he had just made an excellent (if unwitting) case for membership in the Roman Catholic Church. A club where the admissions policy is so perfectly promiscuous … Read more
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for justice sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:10). It was forty years ago this May that the body of a dead Jesuit was found in an apartment in Paris owned by a prostitute whose husband needed money for a lawyer to get him out of … Read more