(Note: This previously unpublished article was written on September 14, 2001, from the office of Fr. John A. Perricone at St. Agnes Rectory in Manhattan, some two miles away from Ground Zero.  Much of the horror of that day has faded. Even more so, its urgent lessons. Much of America seems to have moved on [...]

More than most of Shakespeare’s plays, Julius Caesar begs a good many questions. Who are the heroes? Where are the out and out villains, the machiavels, who are so evident in many of Shakespeare’s other plays? Where are the women? Is their relative absence significant? What does it say about politics and politicians? What does [...]

Many baseball fans have been alarmed, if not disgusted, by recent news regarding Los Angeles Dodgers star pitcher Trevor Bauer, who is under investigation for allegations of sexual assault. According to the accuser, Bauer physically and sexually assaulted her on two separate occasions, including while she was unconscious. As troubling as such a story is [...]

That sport best pleases that doth least know how: Where zeal strives to content, and the contents Dies in the zeal of that which it presents: Their form confounded makes most form in mirth, When great things labouring perish in their birth. Love’s Labor’s Lost Strange to say (though not much stands outside that category [...]

The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet of the Devil’s party without knowing it. — William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. “Milton,” replied Father Thomas Edmund Gilroy, “though undeniably possessed of poetic [...]

For the child—and the adult who knows there is still a child in all of us—fairy tales reveal truths about ourselves and the world. As psychologist Bruno Bettelheim stated in his extraordinary study titled The Uses of Enchantment (1976), “the fantastical, sometimes cruel, but always deeply significant narrative strands of the classic fairy tales can aid in [...]

Lorne Park Baptist Church in Mississauga, Ontario, has fired Rev. Junia Joplin after he announced his transitioning from a male to a female. The congregants voted to terminate his employment, the majority for theological reasons. The chair of the church’s executive council stated that Joplin was offered “a fair severance.” Nonetheless, he is suing for [...]

“I just don’t think I’m ready to get married, have kids, and do all that. She and I are still learning to adult,” said a friend of mine the other day. He and his girlfriend have been together for several years, are both in their late 20s, and enjoyed steady employment. Although trivial and mundane, [...]

The original title of this delightful comedy was Sir John Falstaff and the Merry Wives of Windsor. This is hugely significant because the play is largely a vehicle or an excuse for the lampooning of the character of Falstaff, who had made his first appearance in Henry IV, Part 1. In that play, Falstaff’s character [...]

Mainstream corporate media have been all over a recent U.S. Census Bureau report noting that Americans identifying as white have declined in numbers for the first time on record, while the Hispanic and Asian populations experienced significant growth in the past decade. Though this has, of course, provoked many predictable commentaries on race in America [...]

It is now a commonplace among conservatives that Leftist beliefs such as Critical Race Theory, catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, the blessedness of abortion, and the necessity of COVID-19 lockdowns are substitute religions. What is not commonplace are the full implications of this assumption. By calling these Leftist beliefs religions, conservatives are implying that followers adhere [...]

The Merchant of Venice is perhaps the greatest and indubitably the most controversial of Shakespeare’s comedies. It has been misunderstood and misconstrued to such a degree, however, that it is often seen as a tragedy, not a comedy. Such is the critical blindness of the age in which we find ourselves. Prior to a discussion [...]

There’s a touching section in Alessandro Manzoni’s classic novel The Betrothed, which focused on the vicious plague that consumed Milan and the Lombardy region in the 1620s. Renzo, the main character, watches a young Italian mom hand over the lifeless body of her precious daughter to a monatto, i.e., a worker tasked to collect the [...]

American Catholics are really excited about Britney Spears’ announcement on Instagram that she is “Catholic now.” An article on the website ChurchPOP noted: “Whether or not Spears' announcement is serious, let us continue to pray for her. Our Lady of the Rosary, please pray for Britney Spears!” Catholic social media influencer Lizzie Reezay of the [...]

It is not a secret that there is a war on art, a war against the good and beautiful. The new Vandals are on the move. And unlike the vandals of the previous generation who framed crud as art, the new Vandals tear down and destroy all art in the name of the politically correct [...]

A few days ago, as everyone on social media knows, the American gymnast Simone Biles, a truly spectacular athlete, removed herself from her team at the Olympics because she could no longer trust her sense of her body as it must spin and somersault in the air and plunge to the floor. Divers have been [...]

Perhaps it’s only natural in today’s polarized world to witness a gymnast who decided to stop competing igniting massive controversy across the political spectrum. Though, to be fair, the gymnast happens to be Simone Biles, one of the greatest in the history of the sport, and the competition she decided to quit was the Olympics.  [...]

There are two ways of reading Romeo and Juliet, one of which is correct, in the sense that it is the way that Shakespeare meant it to be read and understood, and the other is incorrect, in the sense that it violates and perverts Shakespeare’s intentions. The incorrect way of reading the play, which is [...]

The saddest line in all of Western literature is at the end of Thomas Malory’s Le Mort d’Arthur. The divinely blessed Round Table has been destroyed, betrayed and sabotaged by the very knights who had been charged with its protection. King Arthur has been utterly defeated by jealous, power hungry hordes whipped into fury by [...]

Some anti-Catholic myths just refuse to die. Take, for example, those about the medieval Church popularized in contemporary secular history books (often influenced by older Protestant narratives and analysis). Medieval Catholicism, so we are told, was a time of great biblical illiteracy; it was a time when man’s effort counted more than divine grace; it [...]