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
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
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
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
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
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
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
This all started when I needed some sort of quotation suggesting that, lacking all else, civilization needed but two books, the Bible and Shakespeare. Searching my highly fallible memory, I vaguely recalled something that Scott Walter had written to me about a passage in A.N. Wilson’s book on Hilaire Belloc. According to my memory, this … Read more
In 1770, Boswell set down many pages of brief remembrances of what Samuel Johnson had said during that year. Johnson at one point, it seems, was speaking of “a certain Prelate.” This clerical gentleman evidently “exerted himself very laudably in building churches and parsonage-houses.” Johnson did not find him a man of much “professional learning,” … Read more
I believe … in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Recently, I heard from a young graduate student whom I did not know. He told me he was becoming a Catholic. In the process, he was taking instructions at a local parish. Evidently, there were a number of people also taking instructions. One … Read more
The Greyhound San Francisco Express left from Harrah’s Casino in Reno at 7:45 in the morning — supposedly. Clearly, it is the fastest ground way to return to the City. It was January 2, the day of the Rose and Fiesta Bowls, games I wanted to see. Plenty of time. In the line in front … Read more
Editor’s note: Pope John Paul II prepared the following reflection for a Vatican conference to commemorate the tricentennial of the publication of Newton’s Principia. Is the Community of world religions, including the Church, ready to enter into a more thorough-going dialogue with the scientific community, a dialogue in which the integrity of both religion and … Read more
In the Responsory for the Office of the Third Friday of Advent, we read: “For if one hopes, even though his tongue is still, he is still singing always in his heart. But the man who has no hope, no matter what clamors and shouts he makes to be heard by men, is speechless in … Read more
This year Georgetown University celebrates the two-hundredth anniversary of its founding by Bishop John Carroll. It is the oldest university in this country with Catholic origins. Interestingly, the University of Bologna in Italy, the oldest university in the world, the Alma Mater Studiorum, is currently celebrating its 900th Anniversary. Throughout medieval and modern times, Bologna … Read more
On December 23, 1923, Isak Dinesen, from her farm in Ngong in present-day Kenya, wrote to her mother in Denmark: I wish I could smell the Christmas tree and the indescribably delicious aroma of roast goose out here; it is quite right… that “the nose is the memory,”—but I am sure that you will all … Read more
Not often in history has a single event had the multifold and far reaching effect upon a whole civilization and, more poignantly, Western consciousness than the Great War. Prior to 1914, from at least the eighteenth century, in the West one of history’s great calms reigned, a calm made up of rationality, civility, of respect … Read more
James Boswell reached Motiers, Switzerland on December 14, 1764. He had climbed on horseback over a peak he called the “Mountain Lapidosa”—the “Rocky Mountain,” probably Mount Chasseron—but almost the first thing he did was to “alight” at the door of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Boswell was twenty-four and wanted to “use his time well.” By some fast … Read more
In the recent film “Wedding in Galilee,” two traditional Muslim couples were shown together praying, while the camera zeroed in on some beads sliding along a wire with their chant. In his essay “Worship in the Parish Communities” (Feast of Faith, Ignatius, 1986), Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger mentioned the importance of not making Mass our only … Read more
