Please never forget, we Catholics have a great legacy. We’ve been promoting liberal education since the days of St. Paul. Some of our greatest saints were liberally educated, and promoting all that is good and true and beautiful has been one of our greatest causes. The author recently delivered the address below to the Roman [...]
Paul Kingsnorth believes that the Machine Age has replaced the four P's of traditional culture (the past, the people, place, and prayer) with four S's: science, self, sex, and the screen. Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity, by Paul Kingsnorth. (348 pages, Random House, 2025) Paul Kingsnorth is right about much, and he [...]
The Letter of Clement provides our first glimpse of the Gospel fused with 'Romanitas'—a vision of Rome not so much as a symbol of strength and power as of unity and peace. Whereas the old 'Pax Romana' was achieved through conquest and force, the new order would be built on the love of Jesus. The [...]
At Easter in the year 432, in the village of Slane, Ireland, Saint Patrick declared: “There is no better day for my task. I will announce my mission by lighting the Paschal Fire at this place on Easter Eve!” One day in Lent, a boat sailed up the winding reaches of the Boyne, past the [...]
Neither the past nor the present can be reduced to a simple morality play with unambiguous heroes and villains. This false and superficial understanding of human nature and the human condition has convinced many that American power and decency are, or ought to be, unassailable, and that the continued application of technology will forever sustain [...]
In “Big Wonderful Thing: A Texas History,” Stephen Harrigan explores the “poignantly unguarded self-love” and the “fierce national personality” that oozes from Texans. He is unapologetic in his praise for and fascination with the state. “Big Wonderful Thing,” however, is not a tribute piece; instead, Mr. Harrigan’s history carefully holds in tension the grandeur and [...]
It is not only the beginning and the end of our history that consist in actions on a cosmic scale. The central point is also a creative act, the resurrection of Christ, himself the Word of God, by whom all things were made, who is to come in the fullness of time to make all [...]
By 1741, George Frideric Handel had fallen deeply into debt, and was even threatened with debtors’ prison. Instead, he departed to Ireland for a sabbatical, where he wrote his "Messiah" in just twenty-four days. While Handel’s Messiah is, for many, an annual Advent spectacle, in the Classical Girl household, the 1741 oratorio gets pulled out during [...]
The Church is like an old schoolmaster, the schoolmaster of the centuries, and as such it has seen so many students pass before it, cultivate the same poses and fall into the same errors, that it merely smiles at those who believe that they have discovered a new truth. One of the catchwords which keeps [...]
Historian Walter McDougall is that rare "twofer": a wonderful writer of history and a wonderful lecturer. In this book, he combines essential tips for the writer with a series of uniformly sparkling essays that range from the era of the American Revolution to the present day. Gems of American History: The Lecturer’s Art, by Walter [...]
Edmund Burke contended that, far from creating peace, the French Revolution had generated the greatest despotism the world had yet seen, politicizing all things and enslaving the vast majority of the population. Of Edmund Burke’s (1729-1797) four Letters on a Regicide Peace—his final work, written while he rested on his deathbed—the fourth is, by far, [...]
Joel J. Miller is as much a movement as a man. Of everything his new book "The Idea Machine" has to offer, I most appreciate his argument that books not only reflect our humanity, but they also, in dialogue with one another, teach us to be more humane. Joel J. Miller, The Idea Machine: How [...]
In his ideas regarding American foreign policy, James Monroe echoed both Washington and Jefferson, yet he had to worry about things neither of them did—in particular, European involvement in the affairs of the republics of the Western Hemisphere. His policy needed to follow the diplomatic thought of the previous administrations while also adapting to quickly [...]
The whole theological thought of the Middle Ages was dominated by St. Augustine, especially by the positions taken by Augustine in opposition to Pelagius. And in this the Middle Ages were purely and simply Catholic and Christian. For mediaeval thought (and in this it only showed that it was Christian), man was not simply an [...]