In a recent article at The Pillar, the estimable J.D. Flynn interviews a family in the Cleveland archdiocese whose son was preyed upon—through two years of utterly demonic enticement, spiritual blackmail, and cruelty—by a priest now serving a life sentence in prison. It is an agony to read, as it should be. The young man [...]

Apart from The Comedy of Errors, Macbeth, a tragedy of errors, is the shortest of Shakespeare’s plays. At only 2,107 lines it is barely half the length of Hamlet, with which it is often compared. The date of its composition is not certain, but several clues within the text suggest strongly that it was first [...]

“Ye shall be as gods,” said the serpent. Whitaker Chambers called it the second oldest religion in the world. It has always proved popular. In his time, it took the form of communism. But the tempter is not so stupid as to appear in the same guise always; even human beings eventually get the idea [...]

For those who missed it, October 17th was National Black Poetry Day, a day where Americans can presumably celebrate their favorite black poets like Phillis Wheatley, Langston Hughes, or Maya Angelou. This is not to be confused with National Poetry Day celebrated on October 1st in the U.K., World Poetry Day on March 21st, or [...]

It’s a book! It’s a game! It’s got a sticker, and a token, and a secret message! There’s a map of a very special island! BRAVE Books’ new release Fame, Blame, and the Raft of Shame, by U.S. Congressman Dan Crenshaw, packs in all of that and more—promising hours of pure fun along with moments [...]

King Lear interweaves the story of Lear and his daughters with the parallel story of Gloucester and his sons in such a way that we cannot truly speak of plot and subplot but only of co-plots woven together with majestic skill. Lear is betrayed by the deception of his self-serving daughters Regan and Goneril; Gloucester [...]

LifeSiteNews published an article three weeks ago, on October 18, on Covaxin, a vaccine (a bona fide inactivated virus vaccine, not an mRNA neologism) developed by Bharat Biotech in India. It could potentially prove a breakthrough in many Catholics’ long wait for a vaccine that would satisfy the dual concerns of ethical unimpeachability and medical [...]

“I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence.” So reveals the main character of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Black Cat,” about a man who plunges ever deeper [...]

I try my best to temper my tech-skeptic instincts, but despite these efforts, I can’t help but consider all the worst possibilities of the coming “Metaverse.” In fact, the more I read about it, the more I think Christians should start preparing for it now, before we, along with our family and friends, are pulled [...]

The Culture War as we know it is over, and we’ve lost. Now, mark my words carefully. I said the Culture War as we know it is over. The war for our country’s soul has only just begun. What’s over now is what you might call the Napoleonic Phase of the Culture War: the two [...]

Critical Race Theory and the arguments and actions both for and against it are constantly in the news—headlines tell us how it is variously mandated, praised, cursed, or banned. Yet, through the din, a larger question is taking form: how did the teaching industry become a political behemoth largely opposed to Western and Judeo/Christian values?  [...]

Othello is the first of a triumvirate of tragedies written by Shakespeare during a particularly dark period of English history. Taken together with Macbeth and King Lear, both of which were written shortly afterward, Othello exhibits the angst and anger felt by Catholics following the reintroduction of laws which made the practice of the Catholic [...]

This year, if you want to make your Thanksgiving meal as awkward as can be, stand up from the table in front of your extended family, clear your throat, and recite a nice long poem. Your in-laws will visibly blanch, and the chattering toddlers will grow silent. This will be no mere political argument or [...]

I dread the final season of The Chosen because that is when they will kill my dear friend Jesus. This may sound heretical, but I have never felt exactly this way about Him before. There has always been a kind of veil between Him and me, a fog that even His light cannot fully pierce. He is [...]

The chorus has grown louder over the past few years: Listen to the experts! Authoritative opinions carry epistemic weight; of that, there is little dispute. However, even on matters where an authority is an expert, there are times when things are better left unsaid. Take, for instance, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s recent interview on CBS’s Face [...]

It’s not hard to be depressed if you’re a conservative Catholic in 2021 America. That’s especially the case if, like me, you marvel at a country that seems to have radically changed in just a single generation. If a drag queen had shown up at my public elementary school in suburban Northern Virginia in the [...]

If Shylock in The Merchant of Venice is a thinly-veiled Puritan (see the earlier article in this series), so is Malvolio in Twelfth Night. Maria, in act two of Twelfth Night, describes Malvolio explicitly as “a kind of puritan,” and the critic Leslie Hotson has argued that Malvolio was modeled on the Puritan William Knollys, [...]

“Not many of you should become teachers. As you know, we teachers will be judged with greater strictness than others.” (James 3:1) What happens in our country’s college classrooms matters. It matters, of course, to the students themselves. It matters to their professors. And it matters, greatly, to the country, whose reins of leadership will [...]

In the recently-released book The Case for Patriarchy, Catholic writer and teacher Timothy J. Gordon boldly proclaims the “kingship of the social reign of Christ, King of the Patriarchy!” Gordon’s well-researched, deeply insightful work deconstructs feminism’s numerous nostrums that have upended modern life in the name of a false paradise of sexual egalitarianism.  Gordon traces [...]

Dystopian fiction can offer a curious consolation in dark times. There is comfort of a sort in the knowledge that our current troubles were foreseen by others: this shows, if nothing else, the evils of our age are not as chaotic as they sometimes seem. On the contrary, they conform to a pattern that can [...]