My wife recently gave me the boxed DVD set of the British television series Brideshead Revisited. No doubt most readers of crisis will have long since read Evelyn Waugh’s masterpiece and seen the filmed version. The great Catholic fiction writers of the 20th century were not particularly happy to be thought of as “Catholic novelists”—that … Read more
My wife recently gave me the boxed DVD set of the British television series Brideshead Revisited. No doubt most readers of Crisis will have long since read Evelyn Waugh’s masterpiece and seen the filmed version. The great Catholic fiction writers of the 20th century were not particularly happy to be thought of as “Catholic novelists”—that … Read more
Some months ago, my wife and I found ourselves watching a television program hosted by Ollie North. I am under the impression that he has a series on military affairs, or heroes, or something in that vein. In any event, on this evening he was interviewing King Michael of Romania. Â Unless they are as … Read more
Some months ago, my wife and I found ourselves watching a television program hosted by Ollie North. I am under the impression that he has a series on military affairs, or heroes, or something in that vein. In any event, on this evening he was interviewing King Michael of Romania. Unless they are as old … Read more
On several evenings recently, my wife and I have gone around the corner to our son’s flat overlooking the harbor in our small town here on the Massachusetts coast. He had invited us to watch a television series that takes us into the day-to-day workings of Windsor Castle over the course of a year. For … Read more
On several evenings recently, my wife and I have gone around the corner to our son’s flat overlooking the harbor in our small town here on the Massachusetts coast. He had invited us to watch a television series that takes us into the day-to-day workings of Windsor Castle over the course of a year. For … Read more
The question, no doubt, occurs intermittently to anyone who tries to say his prayers on any regular basis, most notably with regard to petitionary prayer: “Is this doing any good?” On the one hand, there is the thought, “Oh well, God knows, and has known from all eterÂnity, what He is doing, and nothing I … Read more
How shall we speak of Mozart? We are always struck by his sprightly lyricism, of course, which offers us immeasurable delight but at the same time brings tears to our eyes—the tears that arrive when we find ourselves hailed with pure beauty. Grandeur, hilarity, bliss, poignancy, joy—what words suffice?  I was listening to Mozart … Read more
How shall we speak of Mozart? We are always struck by his sprightly lyricism, of course, which offers us immeasurable delight but at the same time brings tears to our eyes—the tears that arrive when we find ourselves hailed with pure beauty. Grandeur, hilarity, bliss, poignancy, joy—what words suffice? I was listening to Mozart the … Read more
I hear from my young friends that there is a song abroad now, apparently widely sung, in which God is hailed as being “awesome.” Which of course He is. But a tussle in my own imagination presents itself upon hearing this title. On the one hand, I can only extol the ardor that marks the … Read more
The question, now a thousand years old, of the Roman Catholic Church and the OrÂthodox Church crops up fairly reguÂlarly in conversation. At least it does for me. Having myself been received into the Church from evangelical Protestantism, and having taught in college, seminary, and boys’ schools for 40 years, I find my former students … Read more
My wife and I have a friend, a lady—and “lady” is the right word here—who is what earlier centuries, especially in England, would have called “highÂborn.” I suppose the term “blue-blood” might apply. There is an air about her that has occasioned several piquant conversations between my wife and me. This “air,” be it said … Read more
This will form the third entry in a somewhat unplanned seÂries that I stumbled into two months ago. I found myself wanting to say something helpful to readers of Crisis about that notable and enerÂgetic sector of Protestantism loosely known as “the evangelicals,” but I ran out of space in my first column and spilled … Read more
To continue the discussion of evangelicals, begun last month: Catholics are somewhat aghast at the sheer energy that is at work in the evangelical churches. For one thing, the evangelicals never need to have any sort of yearly canÂvass for funds. You can’t stop them from giving lavishly. Catholics think you are doing handsomely if … Read more
The other day my wife and I found ourselves talking about a friend who is on the (very large) staff of ministers at a big, energetic Protestant church near Chicago. The conversation turned to the whole phenomenon of such churches, and it struck me that it might be something to the purpose to try to … Read more
I grew up in a white clapboard house in Moorestown, New Jersey, just outside of Philadelphia. In those days it was a quiet Quaker town with broad, silent streets lined with huge oaks, elms, and maples, and venerable houses presiding on each side. One still heard the Quaker thee’s and thou’s routinely, especially at the … Read more
My current reading has me head over heels in Lord David Cecil’s Melbourne, Lord Annan’s Roxburgh of Stowe, Muggeridge’s Chronicles of Wasted Time (all of them for the second, or tenth, time—it’s the exquisite prose), and Thomas Merton’s The Waters of Siloe, a history of Gethsemane and the whole Cistercian phenomenon. But there is another … Read more
The sailors among you will know what that title is all about. But it is not with those marine technicalities that I am going to start. Rather, I have in mind that painting by Georges de la Tour of a young woman (I seem to recall that it is the Magdalene) staring at a skull … Read more
A jolt is very often salvific, especially if it joggles in us the Deadly Sin of superbia (pride, if your Latin is in tatters). Some months ago I was asked by a British company if I would agree to appear on camera as a sort of commentator in connection with a dramatic television documentary they … Read more
One could be forgiven for finding that the above title gives him a start. Bob Jones University in the columns of Crisis? What ho? What ho, indeed. And the et al. there: To whom might that refer? Well, Dallas Theological Seminary, for one. And Wheaton College in Illinois. And probably all Assemblies of God institutions, … Read more