Fyodor Dostoevsky was condemned to death—public execution by firing squad. The year was 1849 and the young Dostoevsky, fresh from the success of his first novel, Poor Folk, had joined a liberal humanitarian group devoted to studying utopian models of socialism. During one of their meetings, the police appeared and arrested the whole company. They … Read more
Summer has become a season of strange and stark irony. While it brings forth the beauty of the world, it also brings forth the ugliness of the age. The warmth and light are invariably attended by trashy fashion and tattooed flesh. These dog-days, there is hardly a street or a store without people who appear … Read more
“Sherlock Holmes was a drug addict without a single amiable trait,” wrote George Bernard Shaw—and he was absolutely right; but such vehement condemnation betrays the irresistability of Sherlock Holmes. In 1886, a struggling physician named Arthur Conan Doyle made a fateful decision which was intended simply to pay the bills, but which would end up enriching … Read more
Many Americans are just getting out of rehab for their addiction to AMC’s taut modern-western crime-drama, Breaking Bad. The expression “breaking bad” is street slang meaning to break loose from the established traces and give in to wildness and wickedness. The series told the tragic, traumatic tale of Walter White, an unassuming high-school chemistry teacher … Read more
If all literature were based upon plausibility and credibility, there would be no such thing as fiction. Imagination is a deterrent to objectivity. To expect a storyteller to tell facts alone is just as unreasonable as expecting a painter to paint precisely what he sees. Painting is not photography; neither is fiction a documentary. In … Read more
The world reeled in disbelief and grief. Sherlock Holmes was dead. But not for long. His resurrection—or resuscitation, to use a more practical term instead of such a mystical one out of reverence for the Master—his resuscitation brought with it a matchless struggle between logic and magic. Out of the tomb, a hero and a … Read more
If there is anything pleasant in life, it is doing what we aren’t meant to do. If there is anything pleasant about criticism, it is finding out what we aren’t meant to find out. It is the method by which we treat as significant what the author did not mean to be significant, by which … Read more
Despite recent defense rallies by Bill Gates, wars are raging against the embattled Common Core State Standard Initiative, now implemented in 44 states and the District of Columbia. Though criticisms can be leveled at the lack of evidence that the Common Core will lead onward into a brave new world of education, the overarching problem … Read more
All are guilty. Unbridled assertion of self. Satanic pride. Pure and simple devilment. All are Judas. All are Caiaphas. All are Pilate. All have spit in the face of Christ wantonly, offhandedly, and spitefully. All have smilingly skewered God to a gibbet. All wretchedly wear their Albatross. And some, through it all, have found salvation … Read more
Oh! St. Patrick was a gentleman Who came of decent people; He built a church in Dublin Town, And on it put a steeple. When the world fell into darkness, the smile of God shone like twilight on Ériu’s Isle. Even as demons tramped her four green fields, those fields rested … Read more
There are a great many saints who will never be known on this side of God’s grace, whose lives merited heavenly bliss but not the history books. This host of secret saints represents the central secret of what it means to be a saint: who a person is is more important than what a person … Read more
Although the delight of civilized readers everywhere, detective fiction is built upon an uncivilized pessimism that expects to find evil lurking behind the most civilized bulwarks—such as a butler. In the labyrinths of the mystery story, it is quite normal for the most mild-mannered of men to be the most murderous of monsters. For Sherlock … Read more
Despite the implementation of the Common Core, it remains the common conclusion that American education is in a state of free fall. Students graduate from high school with little ability to read standard prose and less ability to write at an elementary level. They lack appreciation for the cultural heritage of Western Civilization and cannot … Read more
For forty-one years America has grown sick under the shadow of legalized abortion. For forty-one years Americans have gathered at the nation’s capital to march in protest. For forty-one years, over forty-one million American babies have been butchered before they could even be born. Abortion is perhaps the single most egregious evil in the history … Read more
WHETHER COMMON CORE EDUCATION IS CONTRARY TO CLASSICAL EDUCATION Objection 1. It would seem that the Common Core State Standards Initiative is not contrary to classical education. For, as the classical education movement is aimed at broad-based learning, Common Core education provides standards that are broadly applied across the country to prepare students with twenty-first … Read more
Twas only a matter of time. And it came—as it comes to all. ’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, a small creature was stirring—my seven-year-old daughter. “Dad,” (I knew the time was come,) “does St. Nicholas bring us presents at Christmas, or is it just you and Mom?” “Daughter,” (I knew … Read more
Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat. Please put a penny in the old man’s hat. As Christmas carols draw mind and heart to the spirit of the season, the Church also calls for spiritual preparation through Advent. All are bidden with the shepherds to “go to Bethlehem and see” with minds and hearts … Read more
When I first read “An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving” by Louisa May Alcott in her collection of short stories entitled Aunt Jo’s Scrap-Bag, I was—truth be told—unmoved. But truth is often painful … and embarrassing. The temptations to label this little-known episode from the well-known author of Little Women as cliché and cloying are quite real. They are, nevertheless, temptations … Read more
There is a growing consensus among human beings that the effects of our developing technology are not conducive to human development. Popular technology, despite its claim to interact and connect, breeds isolation. It causes people, especially young people, to stray into an introverted withdrawal from others and the world. As such, these results are antithetical … Read more
October 31 does not receive much attention as a saint’s feast day in the United States. The ostentatious festivities of Halloween are, of course, difficult to compete with—as is the Holy Day it vigils. Besides being a night of merry devilry and the eve of All Saints’ Day, October 31 commemorates the feast of one … Read more