The beauty of fairy tales is their ability to attractively depict character and virtue. Goodness glimmers while wickedness and deception are unmasked. The notion that fairy tales and fantasy stories stimulate and instruct the moral imagination of the young is, of course, not new. The Victorians certainly held to that notion when they brought the [...]
Russell and Annette Kirk with the author Driving across the snowy landscape of Michigan the day after Christmas in 1973, I was somewhat apprehensive. I had been invited to take part in the first seminar of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in the ancestral home of Dr. Russell Kirk at Piety Hill. We were [...]
All the King’s Men (1946): It’s as if Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) wrote this classic American tale principally for college and university students. With a solid foundation in the liberal arts, they will recognize the philosophical and psychological theories that a central character, Jack Burden, has in mind when he transforms them into excuses for [...]
Several years ago, when I was in Europe leading a pilgrimage tour to England with Joseph Pearce, I learned that the Shroud of Turin was to be on display for veneration in Turin. After the pilgrimage in England I made my way to Italy where I was joined by a friend. After a few days [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
The imagination invests the world with that richness and resonance which makes it an attractive dwelling for the intellect. But the imagination is indispensable to action as well. For the real world is worth our exertion only when the visionary imagination sets the scene for action. Tonight I shall commit the deliberate indiscretion of trying [...]
Scripture speaks of childhood, not merely as a passing biological phase, but as the very heart of what it means to be human. The child also reflects the mystery of Christ, and in the child we glimpse something of the divine reality. Recently I was talking to a mother of two young children, who explained [...]
The one thing that unites man with his most ancient of ancestors and which divides him from all other creatures is his status as a sub-creator, as the imago Dei, who uses his imagination to create in the image of the Creator Himself. Art is the signature of man. —G.K. Chesterton G.K. Chesterton begins his [...]
Contemporary composer Michael Torke’s music invites us to slow down the frenzied pace of our lives, to reflect on who we are as human beings, where we have been and where we are going. His is indeed music for the ages. We often lament the decline of culture, but I would submit that the decline [...]
The one incident in Cervantes’s huge novel that has become American folklore is Don Quixote’s adventure with the windmills. As it happens, it contains, almost incidentally, the Don’s own statement of the crux of his life, the credo that makes his world one of high adventure. He is moved by his knight errant’s sense of [...]
Jesus Christ remains absolutely central to the life of the Church and, indeed, to the whole created order of the universe. In a Catholic economy of salvation, the two orders of nature and grace, of man and God, are not sundered one from the other. Jesus became the Savior of both realms, and God meant [...]
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 [...]
I propose to address the question, how does one survive—and I mean survive as something—in a world that may not? How does one remain sane in a world that is insane; how does one live without fear in a world in which the only certainty is that nothing is certain? "The Speech" was addressed in [...]