Reading the Divine Office each day requires some attention and diligence, but also routine and repetition. I have a great fondness for C.S. Lewis’s remark that if you have only read a great book once, you have not really read it all. This is why we priests and whoever else read the whole Psalter every … Read more
In And the Beagles and the Bunnies Shall Lie Down Together, there is a sequence on the Great Pumpkin, Charles Schulz’s not-so-subtle homage to Christmas, about how the Great Pumpkin rises out of the Patch and looks for sincere boys and girls to whom to give lots of toys. Peppermint Patty and Linus are sitting … Read more
OXFORD—Courtesy of The Chesterton Review, I recently spent two days in Zagreb, trying to organize a small conference there on ethics and economics. Why Croatia? Why Chesterton? Those who’ve read The Napoleon of Notting Hill must know the answer; for those who haven’t, a few clues may explain. In the main square of Zagreb, near … Read more
Adoremus in Aeternum Sanctissimum Sacramentum!” the initial words of John Paul II, on June 12, 1993, when he was at the Eucharistic Congress in Seville, in Spain, in its famous Cathedral. The words mean simply, “Let us adore unto eternity the most Holy Sacrament.” The moving photo in L’Osservatore Romano (June 23) shows the Holy … Read more
This year, the mayor’s race in New York City — always of special interest to Americans — may just be more important than ever. This interest in New York, of course, is not because it is everyone’s favorite city. Yet, New York is a city most Americans have visited and all know about. The outlines … Read more
Before spring semester began, I sat down and read the remarkable new catechism that the Holy Father has just presented—Le Catechisme de l’Eglise Catholique (Paris: Mame/Plon). It was a welcome, indeed exhilarating experience. This book is not merely an aid to understanding the faith but itself a grace and even something of a miracle. I … Read more
1. Lent, le Careme in French, begins On Ash Wednesday; this year it falls on February 2.4. February is the shortest month, thus an appropriate time to state briefly what we think, thoughts, not just because we think them, but because we think them true. Pensees remind us of Pascal, Ash Wednesday of T.S. Eliot, … Read more
One afternoon, I was in the Woodstock Center Xeroxing something or other. The young man in charge of the operations there told me that the following Friday he was singing at the Kennedy Center. The National Symphony Orchestra was doing Antonin Dvorak’s “Stabat Mater,” with the Czech conductor Zdenek Macal and the Oratorio Society of … Read more
Several months ago, I received a letter from Professor John Schrems at Villanova University, an old friend and classmate. A couple of years ago, the two of us had gathered together the remarkable academic essays of Father Charles N.R. McCoy (On the Intelligibility of Political Philosophy, Catholic University of America Press, 1989). McCoy had been … Read more
One of the most beautiful Masses of the Liturgical Year is that of All Saint’s Day, on November 1. I have always loved this Mass. I even wrote a poem about it once—no, relax, dear reader, I am not going to impose it on you here! The Mass’s first reading is that from Revelation about … Read more
The story is told, without any apparent reference to time or place, of a discussion about the qualifications of two candidates. “What do you think of our two candidates for mayor?” one gentleman asked another. “Well,” said the latter, “I am glad that only one can be elected.” For many, no doubt, this is the … Read more
As I approached the end of the fourth grade at Our Lady of Fatima grade school in Seattle, I looked forward to becoming an altar boy. I looked up to them. Those older boys got to wear the white albs, stand up near the priest, and be in front of the entire church. They looked … Read more
I do a good deal of walking. In the instructions to my new Dexter walk shoes (more anon), I am told “walking conditions almost all of your 650 muscles, and uses all of your 206 bones.” Now, I happen never to have known the number of my muscles, let alone bones. Nor do I do … Read more
My brother-in-law in Medford, Oregon, ever alert to the cause of my continuing education, sent me a “Calvin and Hobbes,” a cartoon series I confess not to read much in spite of its explicit metaphysical and theological overtones. The scene begins in a schoolroom. The schoolmarm is standing before the blackboard instructing the class on … Read more
In an Easter meditation he published in The Tablet of London on April 8, 1939, Monsignor Ronald Knox wrote that in comparison to other political and civil societies in history, the Church has not changed much. The sequence of rebellion and radical change that appears to be inherent in other institutions does not seem so … Read more
On the stacks of books by my computer monitor, I noticed a paperback novel with a black cover. I did not pay too much attention to it, except that I wondered where it came from, as I did not remember buying it nor did I recall anyone giving it to me. Perhaps I picked it … Read more
The feast of St. Luke was one of those perfectly beautiful October days in Washington, a Friday. After a noon class in which I was discoursing on Hobbes, a Saudi student in class told me that he liked this material. Machiavelli and Hobbes were not allowed to be studied in his country, he explained. His … Read more
On my desk is a postcard I received several years ago from the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The imprint on the card is a most curious one. It shows Socrates sitting on a throne-like chair with a kind of dunce cap on. He is behind a writing table, with a stylus in each hand. Perhaps … Read more
Justice,” I tell my classes, “is the harshest of the virtues. It is blind and relentless and in its own way inhuman.” If the world were built on justice alone, or even perhaps justice at all, it would be a terrible place. Fortunately, as St. Thomas says, the world is not so built. The world … Read more
Charlie Brown and Lucy are looking over the brick wall. Lucy has her elbows on the wall, with a sort of forlorn, not-again look on her face as she listens to Charlie Brown affirm, “I want to be liked for myself.” Charlie then turns on her with a kind of determined earnestness, “I don’t want … Read more
