About George W. Rutler

Fr. George W. Rutler is the pastor of St. Michael's church in New York City. Fr. Rutler has authored many books including Coincidentally, A Crisis of Saints: The Call to Heroic Faith in an Unheroic World, Hints of Heaven, He Spoke To Us, and Principalities and Powers: Spiritual Combat 1942-1943. A four-volume anthology of his best spiritual writings, A Year with Fr. Rutler, is available now from the Sophia Institute Press.

Manners, Humility, and Dignity

By |2022-02-22T15:10:30-06:00February 22nd, 2022|Categories: Catholicism, Character, Culture, St. John Henry Newman, Timeless Essays, Virtue|

Customs and outward forms signal that one’s duty is greater than one’s self, and neglect of them is an exercise in egotism. Accounts vary, and a few say that the story about our civil Founders is apocryphal, but it would seem that the story is true. As one of the more jovial national patriarchs, Gouverneur Morris, [...]

An Immodest Proposal

By |2020-08-23T08:49:35-05:00August 17th, 2019|Categories: Architecture, Civilization, Culture, History|

By a providence that nervous chroniclers call “luck,” the fire in Paris did not ruin the cathedral of Notre Dame. Most of its major parts remain, however fragile. Since so many have offered unsolicited opinions about the future of the cathedral, I would like to make an immodest proposal. A fad for picturesque ruins grew [...]

Needed: Churchmen of Courage

By |2019-10-13T23:01:25-05:00February 17th, 2018|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Culture, Europe, St. John Henry Newman, Teddy Roosevelt, Virtue, Winston Churchill|

Where there are bishops of moral vigor, there will be an abundance of young men willing to take up the call of service to the Church. Where the spirit is tepid and refreshes itself on the thin broth of a domesticated and politically correct Gospel, seminaries will be vacant… To have been the proverbial fly [...]

When Colleges Betray Their Benefactors

By |2017-09-30T22:20:27-05:00September 30th, 2017|Categories: Culture, Education, Morality, Politics|

Those colleges that neglect the heritage of their benefactors should cease living off their munificent endowments and chart their own course, which, if history gives witness, is the straight and narrow path to oblivion… With sonorous tones on the annual Founder’s Day in my school, the Reverend Sub-Dean clad in his academicals would slowly recite the long [...]

A Ringing Defense of the West: President Trump’s Warsaw Speech

By |2017-10-07T17:08:51-05:00July 17th, 2017|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Donald Trump, Featured, Foreign Affairs, Government, Poland|

On July 6 in Warsaw, the President of the United States spoke with timeless eloquence about the need to defend the West against those who “threaten over time to undermine our individual freedom and sovereignty and to erase the bonds of culture, faith, and tradition that make us who we are”… In the mid-nineteenth century, the [...]

Regensburg, Truth & Appeasement: Benedict XVI as Prophet

By |2023-02-10T18:43:36-06:00September 13th, 2014|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Communio, Pope Benedict XVI, World War II|Tags: |

If a prophet is not without honor save in his own country, a great prophet is not without honor save in the whole world. Pope Benedict XVI bent under that mantle in 2006 when he spoke in Regensburg. His only miscalculation was to assume that civilization might still be civil enough to respect reason. There [...]

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