If Socrates reveals anything about the moral life, it is how uncertain and unstable it is without grounding in knowledge of the Good; and yet he confesses that such grounding is beyond his reach, beyond the reach of human reason itself to attain. In this way Socrates reveals the genuine problem of moral relativity that [...]
However we choose to look at it, October thrills and titillates each of our senses and reaches into the very depths of our suspect souls, whether we actually encounter the dead or merely imagine their various states of being. Oh, the blessings of October, my favorite month. As far back as I can remember, in [...]
Is college education a lost cause? We have reason to hope, but only if we know what real education is. Crisis: “decisive point in the progress of a disease,” also “vitally important or decisive state of things, point at which change must come, for better or worse,” from Latinized form of Greek krisis, “turning point in [...]
However one solves the mysterious Sword of Michael, it is a reminder to us in our hi-tech age that our ancestors had perhaps more technologies than our iPhones have dreamt of. They had a mystical understanding of the interactions of heaven and earth that we have lost. The ruins of their monasteries, the relics of [...]
To understand the journey of the human imagination across civilizations and centuries, one must grasp how the utterly fascinating Hellenic invention of the “democratized” concept of moral judgment in the afterlife came into its beautiful philosophical maturity. And so they came to Rome —Acts IV. “I was not, I was, I am not, I do [...]
If I had to speculate about why more young men are succumbing to nihilism in the culture at large, I would guess that our curriculum has something to say about it. Perhaps young men feel dishonored when the prevailing feminist ideologies that they encounter in their classes at most universities belittle their masculinity instead of [...]
Though an apostle of joy and common sense, Chesterton’s work, especially his stories, has hideous and frightening images running through from beginning to end. What is the place of the grotesque, the nihilistic, and evil itself in his work? The Dark Side of Chesterton: Gargoyles and Grotesques, by John C. Tibbetts, with a foreword by [...]
One of the most delightful things about John Keats's early sonnet, “On First Looking into Chapman's Homer,” is that Keats uses images from the age of global exploration and modern science to describe the feeling of first experiencing what the Homeric poems really are. The classics of the deep past become a vast, unexplored expanse, a [...]
We live in a broken world; we live in a broken time. But we should resolve that these dead did not die in vain. Good can be brought forth from evil. We believe this because it is part of our continuing duty and responsibility to those who died. And there is no better way to [...]
The Latin Mass has never been central to my own experience of the Church, though I respect those for whom it is, including many of our students. The point seems to me that our effort should be to seek the presence of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit and to keep intact both word and [...]
The whole point of "The Lord of the Rings" is that true heroism is inseparable from true humility, and that true humility is inseparable from true love. The spirit of Amazon’s "Rings of Power" is the very reverse of this. Heroism is inseparable from pride, and pride is inseparable from self-empowerment. What would happen if [...]
Perhaps it could be argued that the English monarch is nothing but an effectively powerless figurehead and that, therefore, his or her words are of little consequence. The real power resides with Parliament, not with the Monarch. Not so, I would reply. Or at least not necessarily so. I honestly cannot remember the last time [...]
In the Late Roman Empire, when classical civilization had fallen into decadence and decay, Christianity proved a dynamic and creative force. Amid the deterioration of political authority, the stagnation of economic life, and the decline of learning, a new civilization was emerging. I. As confidence in reason and the expectation of finding happiness in this [...]
Sister Claire’s meditations, chock full of great quotations from great thinkers and pray-ers of the past, as well as liturgical prayers and hymns, combined with her well-organized set of passages taken from the whole of the Bible, make this thin volume extremely useful not only for private study but for preparation for teaching and preaching [...]
