There is a section in Monsignor Luigi Giussani’s The Religious Sense in which he identifies various ways of escape people choose when confronted with questions of unwelcome ultimacy. For instance, the meaning of one’s own existence, about which a great many people appear to be strangely incurious. The section is called “Emptying the Question,” and in … Read more
It was only after I had begun Basic Training, courtesy of an offer from the U.S. Army I could not refuse, that I met my first black man. Well, maybe a dozen of them, actually. I felt an immediate rapport with them, owing to a sense of shared suffering. For those of you whom God … Read more
In an essay written in 1927 on the British philosopher Francis Herbert Bradley—whom hardly anyone bothers to read, much less remember, anymore—T.S. Eliot, who wrote his Harvard dissertation on Bradley, sought to identify the secret of his excellence, tracing it to what he called “his great gift of style.” And while it is true that … Read more
It is not likely that anyone will have heard of Heywood Broun, but he was a once very well known, well-connected newspaper columnist. His take on the world was fairly cynical, especially on the subject of organized religion, which he held in some contempt. But everyone will have heard of Fulton Sheen, the world’s first … Read more
Unless you had the good fortune to have slept right through the 1960s, you’ll probably remember the Yippies, a movement begun back then by a couple of buffoons named Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, which sought to undermine the existing order by revolutionary means. They would later go to prison for inciting a riot at … Read more
We’ve been hearing a great deal of noise lately from Democrat politicians about Judge Amy Coney Barret, in whose dark soul they are horrified to find that “the dogma lives loudly…” So intolerable is the threat she poses, they tell us, that in thwarting her nomination to the Supreme Court they are engaged in the … Read more
In the long march of the Church’s history, stretching all the way back to a certain failed fisherman called Peter—whom Christ himself caught with the bait of eternal life—few occupants of the papal chair have evinced as lofty a level of erudition, existing in happy combination with ardent and uncomplicated piety, as the Bavarian Pope … Read more
Hamlet. O that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter. O God, God, How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Hamlet, Act I, Scene II In his groundbreaking study of … Read more
My grandfather—who loved telling stories and who, in his last years, would endlessly retell the same stories—was particularly partial to the story of the fellow who, condemned to hang for his crimes, was nevertheless permitted a bit of exercise the day before. “In that case,” the prisoner asks the judge, “may I just skip the … Read more
I have known only two women named Agnes in my life. One of them was my grandmother who, having died two years after I was born, I could hardly be expected to remember. But since I was often told things about her—for instance, that she was beautiful and pious and went to Mass every morning—I … Read more
The light of divine glory Shines in the breast of night: Who can see it? A heart Whose eyes keep watch, e’er bright. ∼ Angelus Silesius Years ago when I was a student in Rome finishing up a dissertation at the Angelicum, I needed to schedule a formal defense of my thesis, which centered on … Read more
No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him (Jn 1:17-18). In class the other day, sensing that the attention span of my students was about to snap, I took immediate action, and suggested a Composition of Place to try and jump-start whatever lay hidden … Read more
As a cradle Catholic long accustomed to the rituals and feasts of faith, the earliest memories I have coincide, most happily, with membership in what the comedian Lenny Bruce used to call the only the Church. And so there was never a time when Christmas was not an occasion for sheer wonderment and joy, an … Read more
“If there were no God, there would be no atheists.” ∼ G. K. Chesterton “When I hear the word culture,” Herman Goering boasted, “I reach for my revolver.” Since he was, after Adolf Hitler, the second-most powerful man in the Third Reich, attention was paid. And while he may have stolen the line from Nazi playwright … Read more
Not having seen the recent Ben-Hur, I can only imagine how excruciatingly awful it must have been for audiences to have to sit through this latest box office bust. I say that, not because I possess clairvoyant powers, but because I’ve seen too many reviews predicting the movie would almost certainly go into the tank, … Read more
“After remaining quiescent for centuries in the narrow confines of the lands around the Baltic, the peoples of the North suddenly poured forth in a wave of conquering expansion… They had attacked Constantinople and Pisa and North Persia and Moslem Spain, while their settlements and conquests embraced Greenland and Iceland and Russia, as well as … Read more
The other day I learned something startlingly new about young people. So startling, in fact, that I was quite blindsided by it. When I say young, by the way, I mean the first generation to come of age in a world surrounded by—indeed, defined by—computers. The generation, that is, of my own children. And most … Read more
“I expect to die in my bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the Church has done so often in human history.” ∼ Francis Cardinal George, OMI … Read more
Then he said to his servants, “The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the thoroughfares, and invite to the marriage feast as many as you find.” And those servants went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good; so the wedding hall was … Read more
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” ∼ Oscar Wilde Let me tell you about my least favorite scripture passage. Perhaps it is yours, too, so I needn’t be overly shy about sharing it with you. In fact, I rather suspect we’re in this together, which means, dear reader, … Read more