“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 [...]

Every summer brings high temperatures and new lows of indecency to our streets as fashion trends plummet more and more into nudity. This summer, especially, there is a bizarre vibe of “letting loose” as a result of coming out of lockdown, celebrating restored freedoms with freedom from clothing. It is strange and disconcerting. But strangest [...]

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” That is from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who is one among our gallery of honored men and women at Magdalen College of the [...]

The author of the late-medieval Arthurian romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is unknown. He was a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer, which means that he was writing in the late fourteenth century, and he is probably the author of three other works, including the long allegorical poem Pearl.  Although the Gawain Poet was living [...]

Of all the civilizations of the world, the West is the most beleaguered and under attack. Making matters worse, it is often the children of the West—the descendants of those heroes, martyrs, and patriots who labored and died for faith, family, and fatherland—that are leading the desecration of Western Civilization. What, exactly, happened? The enemy [...]

Everyone knows that a good man is hard to find, but a good artist is even harder—especially in the Catholic art scene. As a result, what is not hard to find are churches resembling space stations, sentimental plaster saints, and modernist nonrepresentational adornments. Sacred art is in crisis, and on June 22, the world lost [...]

The backdrop to The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas Beckett, one of the most popular pilgrim sites in the whole of Christendom until its destruction by Henry VIII. It consists of a General Prologue, in which Chaucer introduces the fictional characters who are travelling together on [...]

In my recent book-length poem The Hundredfold, you will find this hymn, inspired by the parable of the Prodigal Son, to be sung to the melody “Old One Hundred Twenty-Fourth,” a melody you may know from the hymn “Turn Back, O Man”: I shall arise, and seek my Father’s house. Sated am I with all [...]