Logicians have an exercise called “The Liar’s Paradox” which is used to illustrate a number of things. The basic scenario is this: Your ship goes down, and eventually you drift ashore, where you are greeted by a native who informs you that everyone on this island always lies. Can you believe him? If what he … Read more
Doctors and lawyers require appointments; celebrities flee the fame they once pursued and turn away importunate visitors; the wise and the mighty are distant from us. How odd that God is always available. He is everywhere, of course. There would be no anywhere without him. The Trinity dwells within the graced person, and the faithful … Read more
When Leo XIII issued Aeterni Patris in 1879 he set in motion a revival of Catholic philosophy and theology that had in Thomas Aquinas its great model and paladin. The urgency of the encyclical can only be understood against the background of those decades during which the Magisterium fashioned an ever more profound critique of … Read more
Before Jacques and Raissa Maritain met Leon Bloy, they had read high praise of the novelist by Maurice Maeterlinck, who thought that Bloy truly had the mark of genius. This prompted the Maritains to read Bloy’s novel, The Woman Who Was Poor. The story drew them imaginatively and spiritually into a world for which they … Read more
C.S. Lewis died on the very day that John Kennedy was assassinated, November 22, 1963, so his passing went largely unmarked in the press. But thirty-five years later Lewis devotees met in New York to commemorate what would have been his 100th birthday. If anything, the reputation of Lewis is on the rise, but this … Read more
A saint said that God did not become man in order that man might become a theologian. But knowing the basics of the faith is not theology; it is a condition of salvation. The widespread illiteracy among Catholics as to what the Church teaches is astounding. A good many Catholics are allegedly unclear that Jesus … Read more
Commencement is over, the students are gone, an unreal peace descends upon the campuses of the nation. But on their walkways will soon be seen returning students of yesteryear, alumni and alumnae, occupying once more the same old spatial coordinates but with time in their eyes, the sense that the permanency of place only underscores … Read more
Marcel Proust wrote in a cork-lined room to shut out all but the sound of his own memories. Whenever recent writers write of writing they tend to refer to Proust and his soundproof room, but to write of writing is already perhaps to take the path of Proustian self-absorption and to reveal which one of … Read more
If you had your pick of pagans who might throw light on what is good and bad about American higher education at the end of the second millennium, you probably would not settle on Seneca. If you were going to propose a reform of liberal education, you probably would not ignore St. Augustine, Cassiodorus Senator, … Read more
If events of the day prompt one to cry, “O Shakespeare, thou shouldst be living at this hour,” a Henry Adams or Ambrose Bierce might suffice to chronicle the current ascendancy of the Snopeses. There is a sense in which Shakespeare lives at every hour, his iambic pentameter furnishing even the most modest of minds … Read more
In a two volume collection of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Letters to His Family and Friends, published in 1900, I find correspondence with Henry James and C. W. Stoddard, among many others. My children remember when we read Treasure Island and Kidnapped together. They have all grown up and gone, the shadows lengthen, but I go … Read more
“This is the worst novel I’ve read all the way through.” Thus began a review by Father Marvin O’Connell some years back. Woe to the sloppy writer who has such a reader—luckily the work in question was not mine. O’Connell has not devoted much time to such ephemeral productions, his own or others. His Irish … Read more
It would be easier to follow James Thurber’s advice to leave your mind alone if it could be mutual. Besides, you’d have to put your mind to it and that makes following Thurber’s advice a contradiction in terms. Mind-boggling, as it were. Of course one could fall asleep, but then Thurber would lose a reader. … Read more
The Catholic can too easily (and increasingly without warrant) feel superior and patronizing when reading of such married clergy as those depicted by Anthony Trollope. Mrs. Proudie, termagant spouse of the Bishop of Barchester, rules the diocese because her husband has been reduced to episcopal putty in her hands. One can still read such delightful … Read more
I was having lunch at the University Club with my colleague professor Astrik Gabriel when word came that Karol Wojtyla had been elected pope. At the time I knew next to nothing about him and part of the excitement I felt was due to the fact that a dark horse had come from the back … Read more
Patrick and Nora lie buried in the Catholic cemetery in Lake City, Minnesota in the shadow of an imposing pillar bearing the legend McInerny. Their individual stones read Our Father and Our Mother. My great-great grandparents. We stopped there a few weeks ago on our way to Minneapolis and Connie tolerated my bout of Celtic … Read more
Laila Davenport was given the news of her husband’s murder when she emerged from the club where she had been playing bridge for the past three hours. Her reaction, given this concentrated use of the mind over an extended period of time, was delayed, but then she grasped what was being told her, let out … Read more
Man, it is said, is a rational animal, though sometimes it is difficult to see this as applying to more than oneself and a few friends — if to them. But of course for a man to act irrationally requires that he put his mind to it, which is why we hold him responsible. This … Read more
There had been brief stretches of warmer weather, but for the most part the cabin had been marooned in a sea of snow and ice until late April, when the thaw began. Private planes had long since ceased waggling their wings as they flew over, there being no smoke rising from the chimney or other … Read more
I have often cited, perhaps in this space, Evelyn Waugh’s solution to living in Socialist Britain. Life was possible there, he decided, only on the condition that he think of himself as a tourist. Was this ruse or realism? In a deep sense we are all tourists here, even when trodding the green, green grass … Read more