Every so often on a recorded or live concert, I will hear a program, usually a musical program, often bluegrass or country-western, in which the master of ceremonies will introduce some singer. As the singer approaches the microphone, the announcer will say, most friendly like, “Ladies and Gentlemen, won’t you please make welcome. . . … Read more
Read Dostoevsky before going to the Soviet Union. Dostoevsky said that there are two ages of man: from the ascent of man to the death of God, and from the death of God to the annihilation of man. A grasp of this chronology is the only fitting preparation for what one sees and experiences in … Read more
Editor’s note: This essay by Russell Kirk constitutes the introduction to Orestes Brownson: Selected Political Essays, published this year by Transaction Books. Nothing is deader than dead politics, we have been told. Why, then, revive the political essays of the philosopher, polemicist, and Catholic publicist Orestes Brownson (1803-1897)? Because the questions raised by Brownson confront … Read more
One morning I noticed a striking filler piece at the end of a column on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. I did not read the explanatory italics, so I did not realize just why this particular passage was there. What it contained was the following brief citation from Malcolm Muggeridge, from an … Read more
Readings at Mass are designed for our instruction, for our salvation, for our minds, that we may know the truth. The Second Reading for the Midnight Mass of Christmas is taken from St. Paul’s Epistle to Titus. We go along in our ways. Suddenly we read or hear something at Midnight Mass where we never … Read more
As I try to reread T.S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday” on Ash Wednesday, a practice I heartily recommend to all those who doubt our greatness, so I also try to meditate on Belloc’s The Four Men during those most Christian of days at the end of October and the beginning of November. I have always felt … Read more
In an interview in Humanities (May-June 1989), the late Walker Percy called this century “the strangest century that I’ve ever heard or read about.” What does this strangeness consist in? For Percy, this century is at the same time the most humanitarian century and “the century in which men have killed more of each other … Read more
When John Paul II recently visited the Dutch island of Curacao in the Caribbean, it was, as I recall, the ninety-third different political entity he has visited. Since then he has logged a couple more. No doubt, John Paul has more frequent-flyer miles than all the Apostles and all the previous popes put together. No … Read more
A friend of mine went to Mass last fall at a University chapel on the campus of one of Virginia’s several state universities. Or at least he assumed it was a Catholic church when he went in. Looking about, he found no tabernacle, no crucifix, no statues, kneelers, or other usual signs of Catholic presence. … Read more
Ever since I read Ralph Mclnerny’s remark about the “fragility of the West” in the February Crisis, I have been thinking about its implications. Our situation is paradoxical. For over 50 years, the principal enemy of the West has been Marxist socialism in its various forms. Practically all political literature has been written in order … Read more
In an interview shortly before he died, Hans Urs von Balthasar was asked about young priests. His response was rather frank: Matters which cannot be embraced in prayer are not worthy to be thought of, and even less to be preached. Thus [many young priests] have arrived at a good criterion for what theology really … Read more
Initially, I confess, a “prayer breakfast” strikes me as a very Protestant thing. We Catholics are more likely, by ourselves, to have Mass together quietly, then go out for breakfast as a kind of overflow from worship. Faith with fellowship typifies the one; sacrament then sociability the other, however much faith, fellowship, and sacrament belong … Read more
William Burleigh at Scripps-Howard in Cincinnati happily manages each year to give me a copy of the latest paperbound collection of Peanuts. Bill says simply, “Schulz is a genius.” He is right, of course. This year’s collection is entitled, “If Beagles Could Fly.” Actually, I do not like the animal characters in Peanuts, particularly Snoopy. … Read more
Popcorn, I know, unlike wine, was never mentioned in Scripture. This omission was not, I think, a divine oversight but a reminder for the faithful that they might have to await the discovery of the New World to find out all the good things God had in store for them. You will have to remember … Read more
Milton, I believe, wrote an essay on his blindness. This essay will not be so poignant nor so profound, but it will deal with seeing and not seeing with our very eyes. The difference between being blind and having one eye, as I have recently learned, is in a way infinite. If you have one … Read more
The Dawn Mass on Christmas contains a reading from the Epistle to Titus: “But when the kindness and generosity of God Our Savior dawned upon the world, then, not for any good deeds of our own, but because He was merciful, He saved us.” What is it that comes from generosity and kindness, that is … Read more
In Eric Voegelin’s book Plato and Aristotle we find these words: “The contemporaries of a crisis, however, are reluctant to recognize the magnitude of the problem.” I had only read snippets of the address that Josef Cardinal Ratzinger had given the American archbishops in March until I received the April issue of 30 Days, which … Read more
In The Habit of Being, Flannery O’Connor provides three lessons for modern Catholics. The First Lesson One of the awful things about writing when you are a Christian is that for you the ultimate reality is the Incarnation, the present reality is the Incarnation, the whole reality is the Incarnation…. For me a dogma is … Read more
Bad news makes good headlines. We all know this, of course. We live in a time that specializes in secular apocalypse, probably because we have lost the sense of religious apocalypse. Yet even religious apocalypse seems to be enjoying a revival. The end of the world is big business. We are said to have too … Read more
Self-interest has long been recognized as the dominant factor in most people’s private decisions. Not the only consideration, of course, but usually the most important one. The car one buys, the job one chooses, and the party one attends all normally reflect a judgment as to what best advances one’s own interests, whether financial, social, … Read more