“Are you interested in painting, sir?” asks the cheerful curator of the modern art museum. “No, not me,” says the detective. He passes his hand across his rumpled hair. “Now, Mrs. Columbo, she’s different. That woman is into everything. She does a little painting herself.” “She does?” “Oh, yeah, all the time. She buys these … Read more
Among the genres in which G. K. Chesterton wrote was critical biography. With typical paradox, Chesterton defined two duties for such authors that seem contradictory but are actually complementary. First, he referred to “that understanding sympathy with his subject which every biographer should possess.” Yet he also held that “criticism does not exist to say … Read more
As Christian Europe tore at her own throat during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) the Ottoman Turks missed a golden opportunity to strike their centuries-old enemy. Why? They were themselves absorbed with war in Persia. Moreover, they were beset by a turbulent period of harem intrigue and governed—or not—by a string of ineffectual and self-indulgent … Read more
It has been half a century since the inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the opening of the Second Vatican Council began the period we call the Sixties. Those were heady times. In America there would be a New Frontier, in the Church a new springtime and even a new Pentecost. The windows of the … Read more
It is the election campaign season and all of you need to know that no possible statement from anybody anywhere anytime is free from hyperbole, WORDS IN ALL CAPS, and exclamation marks! This stricture applies very much to No Higher Power: Obama’s War on Religious Freedom, penned by the 88 year-old conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly … Read more
In recent days, the Canadian Christian television show, 100 Huntley Street, has been uncharacteristically aggressive in its denunciation of the anticulture about us. The topic is teenagers and smut—sometimes it is good to return to direct and morally charged words. Their guest has been Josh McDowell, who has spent his whole adult life bringing Christ … Read more
During a late summer adventure that took me to Rimini, Italy, I was able to stop over in London for a day to catch a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in the wonderful Proms series, which is one of the musical glories of that great city. I’ve never been particularly taken with the symphonies … Read more
In 2002, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned a 1.8 million dollar study, popularly known as the “John Jay study,” to uncover the patterns and causes of the sex abuse crisis since 1950. The National Review Board—the entity designated to implement the study—gave the first John Jay report in 2004. In this report, … Read more
Saint Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621), Jesuit, Cardinal, and doctor of the Church, was one of the most influential theologians and political writers in Europe in the years following the Reformation. He sparred with Protestants, heretics, and other Catholics (including Pope Sixtus V, who tried to get some of Bellarmine’s work placed on the Index, but failed) … Read more
Proverbs, folk tales, and fairy tales provide a great source of the world’s accumulated wisdom and perennial philosophy. To read Andersen’s fairy tales is to rediscover the adventure of the human story, to experience the sweet taste of goodness, and to marvel at the miraculous nature of reality. In “The Travelling Companion” Anderson portrays good … Read more
In Charlotte last night, President Barack Obama gave a characteristically well-delivered speech that energized the party faithful and fired up his base. The man is a terrific speaker. If Mitt Romney manages to replace him in the Oval Office, he won’t because of a triumph of oratorical skills. Romney may, however, do so because of … Read more
A wave of excitement is gradually making its way through a small community of Catholics in Houston, Texas. Married couples who embrace the Church’s teaching in Humanae vitae and who use natural family planning have waited too long. Houston, which boasts one of the largest and most highly regarded medical systems in the world has, … Read more
Like Proust’s “episode of the madeleine” which occasioned an involuntary flood of memory, I remembered a flush of things when I chanced upon a Coolidge-Dawes campaign button among items in one of my grandmother’s souvenir boxes. Charles G. Dawes was a fitting companion for the classically-trained Coolidge, whose eloquence has been ignored by jaded historians. … Read more
Are Catholics now so “successfully” assimilated into American political life that they are without political impact—that there really is no such thing as a “Catholic vote”? Unfortunately enough, Catholics are largely indistinguishable from non-Catholics and, despite a few pundits, no, there really is no “Catholic vote.” This obvious conclusion—clear enough from the fact that the … Read more
It has often been said that every age is given the saints that it needs. Saints are signs, works of art fashioned by the hand of God, given by Him to speak to their world by their beauty and their love. If this is true, then it is for each age to discover why it … Read more
This July at a conference at Mundelein Seminary I heard Cardinal George state that the Church is in a more perilous position in this country then it has ever been. In February he said the Church is being despoiled of her institutions and that the new HHS mandate is nothing short of a demand for … Read more
It would be a pardonable offense were one to greet the prospect of yet another book on St. Francis with a yawn. But in the case of Augustine Thompson’s Francis of Assisi: A New Biography (Cornell, 2012), it would be a mistake. All of us know something about St. Francis, but few of us know … Read more
Between 1973 and 1990, when my beloved mother passed away, she and her female romantic partner raised me. They had separate houses but spent nearly all their weekends together, with me, in a trailer tucked discreetly in an RV park 50 minutes away from the town where we lived. As the youngest of my mother’s … Read more
We rural people share a common understanding when it comes to our young: that it is essential for them to leave home after high school, to go away to college or work. This understanding comes from witnessing the stagnation of those who stay, the narrowed horizons and expectations, the dead-end life goals and plans. Those … Read more
Many Catholic writers have balked at being called that. They were Catholic and they wrote, all right, but they didn’t want to be read as if the point of their fiction was a religious message. As if you could earn an indulgence by reading them. And maybe they didn’t like the prospective company. There used … Read more