April 6, 2017
by Fr. James V. Schall
Civility means to act as one would in a settled city wherein law and manners, not force and passion, guide the interchanges of the public order as well as the normal affairs of men within their homes and voluntary associations. Civility presupposes reason, but includes courtesy, compassion, and good taste. It usually involves a written [...]
July 30, 2013
by Howard Kainz
Recently Douglas Murray, a British writer and commentator, published Islamophilia: A Very Metropolitan Malady. In this book he describes how political leaders, celebrities, academics and others, are literally stumbling over each other, vying to heap the most praise on Islam as a religion. We’re talking about a religion that, as I indicated in a previous [...]
March 19, 2012
by Mitchell Kalpakgian
“The clever men at Oxford Know all that there is to be knowed. But they none of them know one half a much As intelligent Mr. Toad!” A human being can be at home in the world just as he can feel a sense of comfort and belonging in his own household, or a person [...]
March 16, 2012
by Joseph Pearce
I'm currently in the midst of watching Sir Kenneth Clark's celebrated Civilisation, first broadcast by the BBC in 1969 and subsequently by PBS. I had heard so much about it, and remember watching it as a child, and was looking forward to having a guided tour of Western Civilisation by one of its most outspoken [...]
February 12, 2012
by Christopher O. Blum
Samuel de Champlain vindicates the ideal of the Christian explorer who brings the light of faith and the benefits of civilization to the heathen savage.
February 1, 1987
by Fr. James V. Schall
One Saturday afternoon in Washington, I chanced to buy a day-old Washington Times on K Street. Walking up 20th Street, I noticed an article entitled, "Virginia 'Prohibition' Cramps Life on Campus." "Oh, those poor dears," I thought to myself, "how can they possibly survive in such austerity?" Coincidently, I had been reading Aquinas on the [...]
December 1, 1986
by Christopher Dawson
The question of the bourgeois involves a real issue which Christians cannot afford to shirk. For it is difficult to deny that there is a fundamental disharmony between bourgeois and Christian civilization and between the mind of the bourgeois and the mind of Christ. But first let us admit that it is no use hunting [...]