What Is Leisure For? John Paul II & Seneca Advise a College Student

By |2018-01-10T15:28:52-06:00January 10th, 2018|Categories: Culture, Freedom, Great Books, Philosophy, St. John Paul II, Virtue|

The “purpose of free time,” paradoxical as it sounds, is more than a merely intellectual concern. The misuse of leisure is a living reality, one of great importance to those who suffer from it… What is the purpose of “free time”? The question may seem foolish. If free time is “free,” isn’t it for whatever [...]

John Paul II, T.S. Eliot, & the Culture of Life

By |2023-04-23T11:45:27-05:00January 3rd, 2018|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Conservatism, Culture, Culture War, Death, Poetry, St. John Paul II, T.S. Eliot|

Both John Paul II and T.S. Eliot give people something to hope for: Blessed John Paul speaks of a new springtime on the horizon signaling the emergence of a culture of life, and Eliot ends “The Waste Land” on a hopeful, if cryptic, note. We are all familiar with Blessed John Paul II’s description of [...]

Papal Portrayals on the Silver Screen

By |2017-11-26T22:31:14-06:00November 25th, 2017|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Dwight Longenecker, Film, History, St. John Paul II|

The papacy is ripe fruit for any filmmaker. As actors played the role of the pope, so each man who was elected pope stepped into a role that was bigger than himself… With the HBO series The Young Pope (reviewed by Tyler Blanski) the world has been taken once again into the irresistible intrigues of [...]

Wind From Heaven: The Poet Who Became Pope

By |2023-05-13T11:42:47-05:00November 11th, 2017|Categories: Books, Catholicism, Christianity, Dwight Longenecker, Sainthood, St. John Paul II|

Monika Jablonska’s “Wind from Heaven” reminds us of the power of literature to renew the imagination, purify the language of the tribe, and inspire the noble pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness. Wind from Heaven: John Paul II—The Poet Who Became Pope by Monika Jablonska (202 pages, Angelico Press, 2017) As we planned the construction of [...]

Pope Francis and the Caring Society

By |2022-12-31T08:48:42-06:00September 30th, 2017|Categories: Adam Smith, Books, Catholicism, Christianity, Civil Society, Compassion, Louis Markos, Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis, St. John Paul II, Virtue|

I’ve not been fully sure what to “make” of Pope Francis. He is clearly a man of God with a deep love for the poor and an even deeper personal humility. But how is one to respond to his pronouncements on economic and environmental issues? Pope Francis and the Caring Society, ed. Robert M. Whaples (Independent [...]

Faith and Reason: The Way to Truth?

By |2023-05-21T11:30:40-05:00January 30th, 2017|Categories: E.B., Eva Brann, Faith, Reason, Senior Contributors, St. John Paul II, St. John's College|

John Paul II’s “Fides et Ratio” is an act of daring: not only an exhortation to professional philosophers to return to foundational rationality, but an invitation to all and sundry to realize their natural philosophical capability. I find this call absolutely remarkable, not only as a Magisterial pronouncement for the faithful, but especially as an [...]

Is There a Proper Role for “Contemporary” Music at Church?

By |2023-01-07T09:49:42-06:00September 17th, 2016|Categories: Christianity, Music, Pope Benedict XVI, St. John Paul II|

In our year-long course on music at Wyoming Catholic College, students read and discuss a chapter from Joseph Ratzinger’s book A New Song for the Lord, “The Image of the World and of Human Beings in the Liturgy and Its Expression in Church Music,”[1] one of the best things ever written about church music. Ratzinger masterfully [...]

We Are Not Our Own: Childhood in a Technological Age

By |2022-02-23T10:06:32-06:00April 12th, 2016|Categories: Abortion, Christianity, Communio, Culture, David L. Schindler, Family, Featured, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Pope Benedict XVI, St. John Paul II, Technology|

Childlikeness, as both the beginning and the end of our creaturely way of being, is the key to being effective and realistic in efforts to renew the world, and indeed is the grounds for never-failing hope in these efforts. Liberal culture’s anti-child practices are bound up with a logic of childlessness most basically defined in [...]

Not Neutral: Technology and the “Theology of the Body”

By |2022-04-30T09:34:04-05:00October 29th, 2014|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Communio, Featured, Marriage, St. John Paul II, Technology|

Pope John Paul II’s “theology of the body” is becoming better and better known among ordinary Catholics, many of whom have found in it a way of connecting the central mysteries of the Christian faith—Trinity, Incarnation, and Eucharist—with their marriages, their bearing and rearing of children, and their sexuality. To such Catholics, the theology of [...]

The Two Worldviews

By |2014-07-16T10:24:48-05:00July 5th, 2014|Categories: St. Augustine, St. John Paul II, Steven Jonathan Rummelsburg|

Merriam-Webster vacantly tells us that a worldview is “the way someone thinks about the world.” By this vapid standard there are seven billion worldviews. The squishy definition matches the convictions of our teachers and mind-molders who choose to stand militantly against taking a stand in this brave new age. Millions of school-age children are being [...]

A Response to Garry Wills on Pope Benedict’s Resignation

By |2022-12-31T09:03:43-06:00February 20th, 2013|Categories: Books, Catholicism, Communio, Pope Benedict XVI, St. John Paul II|Tags: |

Garry Wills has continued to serve as the “go-to” guy for secular media types who need some spleen to pour on the Catholic Church. This past week, he admitted to NY Times readers that he finally had given up hope that the pope would stop being Catholic. (One wonders if he’s still trying to talk [...]

Serve to Conserve? Yes We Can!

By |2016-02-16T14:32:51-06:00November 14th, 2011|Categories: American Republic, Communio, Julie Baldwin, Pat Buchanan, Pope Benedict XVI, St. John Paul II|

Upon the prompting of Stephen Masty, I’d like to explore “what still really exists in America that is worth conserving and what may be, quite frankly, lost to all but memory.” Reid Buckley has declared that he cannot love our country because we are vile. Morally corrupt and bankrupt, we’ve even given Pat Buchanan license to doubt. [...]

Two Years After the Death of Solzhenitsyn

By |2017-06-16T11:29:06-05:00August 11th, 2010|Categories: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Bradley J. Birzer, Communism, Conservatism, Foreign Affairs, Ronald Reagan, St. John Paul II|

“Shut your eyes, reader. Do you hear the thundering of wheels? Those are the Stolypin cars rolling on and on. Those are the red cows rolling. Every minute of the day. And every day of the year. And you can hear the water gurgling—those are prisoners’ barges moving on and on. And the motors of [...]

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