In Quod Apostolici Muneris (1878), Pope Leo XIII deplores those who “under the motley and all but barbarous terms and titles of Socialists, Communists, and Nihilists, are spread abroad throughout the world,” striving in alliance for “the purpose long resolved upon, of uprooting the foundations of civil society at large.” It may sound odd to … Read more
The Sixties wanted Paradise Now: a paradise that ignores the distant and difficult in favor of the immediate and effortless. We wouldn’t transcend life’s conflicts and difficulties by striving after a higher unity, we’d abolish them by denying them recognition. Each would do his thing and follow his bliss, and all would be well. As … Read more
In my first installment, I looked at Pope Leo XIII’s early encyclical Inscrutabili (1878), on the evils affecting modern society, wherein the Pope decried the state’s displacement of the Church’s institutions established for charitable work and the education of youth. I kept in reserve Leo’s severe condemnation of new laws regarding marriage. The issue is … Read more
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Ministry of Love promoted nothing but hatred and the Ministry of Truth spread nothing but lies. Although totalitarianism of the kind described and analyzed by Orwell has all but disappeared from the face of the earth, give or take a country or two, totalitarianism of another, softer kind is marching its … Read more
George Bernard Shaw wrote that “Sherlock Holmes was a drug addict without a single amiable trait,” 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 … Read more
Those who do pro-life work every day watched slack-jawed as a true-blue pro-lifer got garroted by the Republican and conservative establishment. Even today, weeks after the national electoral debacle, they’re beating up Todd Akin for Republican losses. Hardly a post-election think piece gets published that does not further tan Akin’s hide. But, does anyone think … Read more
Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me to recommend to the people of the United States … Read more
The rebellious fervor of the Sixties, with its rejection of traditional standards and authorities, seemed a sudden break from what came before. At a deeper level, however, those developments simply brought to fruition what had long been in the works. What happened at that time was a further step in a centuries-long process of social … Read more
Cardinal Kurt Koch who is the President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity recently gave an interview in which he remarked that Pope Benedict prefers to call his approach to the Second Vatican Council not a “hermeneutic of continuity” but a “hermeneutic of reform.” The expression using the word “continuity” rather than “reform” … Read more
The many analyses of the 2012 election results are not saying much about what may have been the central and fundamental problem: democracy. Notice that I do not say a democratic republic—that was the nature of the American political order as fashioned by our Founding Fathers—but a democracy. A generation ago, Martin Diamond, Winston Mills … Read more
Television and the blogosphere were alive the day after the election with conservative pundits calling for the GOP to forget social issues, to walk away from abortion and marriage, because these issues lost Romney the election. Big time political consultant Mike Murphy said on MSNBC that the GOP does not know how to appeal beyond … Read more
In this column, it has been my special brief to pursue and attempt to resuscitate the reputation of great 20th century and contemporary classical music that I think has been neglected. There is a lot of it, which is why I published a book 10 years ago, titled Surprised by Beauty: A Listener’s Guide to … Read more
One exchange in the second Presidential debate caught my imagination. It was the one in which Mr Romney asked Mr Obama whether he ever thought about his pension, and Mr Obama replied that he did not, but that he was sure that it was smaller than Mr Romney’s. Of course, Mr Romney’s question was itself … Read more
In recommending books to be read by young people from the age of seven to the age of twelve, this critic’s problem is not paucity, but plenitude. For the number of good books for young people is large, and it increases every year. So I set down here brief remarks about a select few books … Read more
One of the greatest Catholic intellects and writers of the twentieth century, Christopher Dawson (1889-1970), worried deeply about the ideological, political, and cultural crises of the western world during the entirety of his adult life. The root of the problem, Dawson had come to believe between the two world wars, was the fundamental decline in … Read more
The trial of Paolo Gabriele, the Pope’s former valet, last week found guilty of aggravated theft of confidential documents from the papal apartments, predictably drew worldwide attention. As the first major criminal trial at the Vatican in modern times, and one that opened up the Vatican and papal apartments to unprecedented scrutiny, it was always … Read more
What strikes me most powerfully about the defenders of the sexual revolution is their immovable abstraction. Always the matter is couched in terms of rights, or individual desires—what I want, what I may pursue. That this sexual laissez-faire destroys the common good, by undermining families and rotting whole neighborhoods from within, seems not to matter. … Read more
Apart from short intervals of confusion, every society has networks of influential people who cooperate to maintain their authority and advance their goals. There is always a ruling class, and we have seen that the Sixties were a period in which a new one consolidated its position. That class, which for the most part still … Read more
The title of Gregory Wolfe’s excellent collection of essays, Beauty Will Save the World, is based on a much-quoted line from Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. In its context it appears only in indirect speech, being attributed by one of the other characters to the “Idiot” of the title, Prince Myshkin. Thus in its original context its … Read more
Thomas Aquinas, practical fellow that he was, understood that not all bad things can feasibly be proscribed by human law. It isn’t because people disagree about what is bad, but rather that a well-governed polity should require few laws, easily promulgated and understood, broadly promoting the common good, wherein the lawgiver can attend to things … Read more
