The Tyrant’s Unexamined Soul

By |2023-04-14T11:22:17-05:00April 8th, 2017|Categories: Featured, Fr. James Schall, Plato, Socrates, Tyranny|

Tyrants—intelligent, charming men as they usually are—rush into politics without first examining their souls. Politics without wisdom is not politics. A recurring theme in Plato’s dialogues, including his Seventh Letter, describes the education of a young man who wants to achieve the highest things, which he considers to be achieved primarily through his ruling the [...]

Shakespeare as Political Thinker: Man’s Supernatural Destiny

By |2019-02-05T16:29:43-06:00March 1st, 2017|Categories: Books, Catholicism, Christianity, Featured, Fr. James Schall, William Shakespeare|Tags: , |

What is new about our era, as opposed to the Christianity of an Augustine, of an Aquinas, or of a Shakespeare, is that now we actually see Christians themselves betraying their own traditions of political limitations… Shakespeare as Political Thinker, edited by John Alvis and Thomas G. West (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1981) For some [...]

Is Barack Obama Our Worst President?

By |2017-07-31T23:48:04-05:00January 17th, 2017|Categories: Barack Obama, Fr. James Schall, Politics, Presidency, Tyranny|

President Obama’s Muslim and community-organizing backgrounds were both traditions that had almost nothing to do with what we once understood to be Western civilization, with its unique American gloss… In the sweepstakes for which of our presidents was the worst, the usual candidates are James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Warren Harding. When William Jefferson Clinton [...]

On the Deaths of Plato and Eric Voegelin

By |2017-07-31T23:48:05-05:00August 28th, 2016|Categories: Books, Christianity, Eric Voegelin, Featured, Fr. James Schall, Plato, Socrates, Timeless Essays|

Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Fr. James Schall as he contemplates the similarities between the death of Plato and the death of one of Plato’s more recent scholars, Eric Voegelin. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher But there is another sort of old age too: the tranquil and [...]

“Remembering Belloc”: Prolific, Versatile, & Controversial Author

By |2020-07-15T14:20:57-05:00June 9th, 2016|Categories: Books, Featured, Fr. James Schall, G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Joseph Pearce|

Considering the unjustified neglect of Hilaire Belloc and the more recent renewal of interest, Fr. James Schall’s book, “Remembering Belloc,” which remembers the man and his genius, is most welcome. Remembering Belloc by James V. Schall, S.J. (192 pages, St. Augustine’s Press,  2013) […]

Is Social Justice a Right?

By |2019-03-11T15:33:37-05:00March 25th, 2016|Categories: Culture, Family, Featured, Fr. James Schall, Justice, Virtue|

For much of my academic life, I considered the terms, “values,” “rights,” and “social justice,” to have equivocal meanings. When these terms were used without clarification, they disrupted any fair social order. Each of the phrases had two or more meanings that usually meant the direct opposite of each other. Conversations and legislation in which [...]

Can Catholic Education Be Redeemed?

By |2017-07-31T23:48:09-05:00March 18th, 2016|Categories: Catholicism, Education, Fr. James Schall, Tracey Rowland|

The annual Cardinal Winning Lecture on Catholic Education, sponsored by the St. Andrew’s Foundation, was delivered on February 6, 2016, at the University of Glasgow in Scotland by Tracey Rowland, the Australian theologian and Director of the John Paul II Institute in Melbourne. Rowland is the author of two books on Benedict XVI and of [...]

Should We Build Walls?

By |2017-07-31T23:48:09-05:00March 3rd, 2016|Categories: Featured, Foreign Affairs, Fr. James Schall, Immigration, Politics, Pope Francis, Presidency|

The recent spat of words between Pope Francis and Donald Trump over the relative merits of bridges and walls deserves some further comment. Both words, “bridge” and “wall,” have their precise meanings. As such, though they are not the same thing, they are not opposed to each other. We need them both. If we try [...]

Is There a Patron Saint of Teachers?

By |2020-10-31T12:24:43-05:00July 25th, 2015|Categories: Christianity, Education, Featured, Fr. James Schall, Liberal Learning|Tags: |

“Your total ignorance of that which you profess to teach merits the death penalty. I doubt whether you would know that St. Cassian of Imola was stabbed to death by his students with their styli. His death, a martyr’s honorable one, made him a patron saint of teachers.” —Ignatius Reilly, in John Kennedy Toole’s, A [...]

Jonathan Swift: Vexing the Rascally World

By |2017-07-31T23:48:15-05:00June 26th, 2015|Categories: Fr. James Schall, Jonathan Swift, Literature|Tags: |

Jonathan Swift In a letter of Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) addressed to the poet Alexander Pope (1688–1744), dated September 29, 1725, Swift spoke of returning to the grand monde of Dublin to deal with various curates and vicars, and to “correct all corruptions crept in relating to the weights of bread and butter throughout those [...]

On the Depths of Villainy

By |2017-07-31T23:48:17-05:00May 10th, 2015|Categories: Christianity, Cicero, Classics, Fr. James Schall, Plato|Tags: |

Rev. James Schall Probably the most famous letter writer of the ancient world was Cicero. In 59 B.C., Cicero wrote to Gaius Scribonius: “There are many sorts of letters. But there is one unmistakable sort, which actually caused letter-writing to be invented in the first place, namely the sort intended to give people [...]

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