I’m sitting outside a downtown Starbucks with two George Washington University undergraduates, talking about sex, politics, and religion. Michele Walk and Conor Joseph Rogers fit my stereotype of contemporary American college students. They’re sincere, confident, and hyperaware of the ways in which they’re different from their parents. Michele and Conor also represent a growing demographic: … Read more
On the first day of the new year, in anticipation of his declaration of “Total War” twelve days later, Adolf Hitler had decided to make better use of manpower, weapons, and armor-plating by scrapping the High Seas Fleet. On January 3, Canadian troops landed in North Africa, one week before the Soviet Red Army entered … Read more
Sometimes a book puts down such deep roots in one’s soul that it seems always present, providing categories whereby one views the world, even when one has not read it in many years. Such a book for me has been The Culture of Narcissism, by Christopher Lasch, that renegade sociologist who should have been or … Read more
“Be right back!” I said to my coworker as I ran to the ladies restroom in my office. Tearing open the Target shipping box, the bright red swimsuit I had ordered online fell into my hands. I slid the strapless, ruched one-piece on and swung open the bathroom stall door to look in the mirror. … Read more
Why do you let me see ruin;why must I look at misery?Destruction and violence are before me;there is strife, and clamorous discord.Then the LORD answered me and said:Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets, so that one can read it readily.For the vision still has its time,presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint. … Read more
During four years of college and seven of graduate school, most of it in philosophy and theology, I heard only one lecture on virtue — the virtue of art. Thus I consider it miraculous that the language of virtue has returned to public discourse. But the virtues don’t tell the whole story about human life. … Read more
If one believes the opinions of American alarmists, Christianity in Europe is already dead, or very close to it. The main reasons for this prediction lie in the indeed worrying demographic trends, as well as the fact that Catholicism in particular has thoroughly fallen out of favor with the intellectual class. But as a European … Read more
When you see a homeless man with a sign saying, “Hungry, need a meal,” what is the biblical thing to do? Here are possible answers: Be generous: Give him a quarter, a dollar, or a five-dollar bill. Be tough: Go on by, being careful not to make eye contact. Select some other option. Lots of … Read more
I go outside for InsideCatholic occasionally, and most recently journeyed across the pond to assay the musical life in London, always a pleasure in what remains, in my experience, the greatest city for music in the world. What other metropolis can boast several superb symphony orchestras and opera houses, to say nothing of the plentitude … Read more
This week I will take up the cudgels in defense of G. K. Chesterton, after reading Austin Bramwell’s acerbic article that dismissed my beloved bard as philosophically unserious and rhetorically annoying. I’m probably not the man to take up the task, since I’m way too attached. Twenty years ago, I teased Robert Spencer, who wages … Read more
Flourishing fully in the 19th century, with Darwin and Marx ascendant and Freud in the wings, the novel matured as a very worldly art form. A kind of heightened journalism, the art of Dickens, James, Balzac and others chronicled society while examining class, romance, war, and politics. The great Russians — Tolstoy and Dostoevksy, the … Read more
I have loved reading since I first put “see,” “spot,” and “run” together, and so one of the great joys I anticipated from motherhood — not in vain — was the pleasure of revisiting childhood books and being introduced to ones I’d missed the first time around. At first there were board books and Pat … Read more
If you want to write satire nowadays, you should give up on publishing books and even articles. Reality outpaces parody so quickly that you’re better off sticking to Twitter. If you take the time to write your dyspeptic warnings of the future into a polished, final form, chances are that, before they are even copy-edited, … Read more
Germany had tried to suborn neutral countries with a dramatization of the war on the Russian front as a crusade against godless Communism. A new ambassador to Madrid was appointed with the intent of persuading Spain that the Nazis were the last defense of Catholic Europe. The former minister to Spain, Eberhard von Stohrer, had … Read more
Aunt Lucerne was the only relative Philip and Roger Knight had, so it was perhaps fitting that she should be absolute. Once in the dimly remembered past she may have entertained doubts, but this was long before her nephews came to know her. In their experience, she had always been omniscient, riddled with certainty and … Read more
Two basic needs that we human beings have are the need for meaning and the need for morality. We need to feel that our lives are meaningful, that they have a purpose. And we need to have an authoritative moral code that tells us what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s good and what’s bad. Absent … Read more
On Thursday, May 1, 1783, with “the young Mr. (Edmund) Burke” present, Samuel Johnson remarked: “It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read if they can have anything else to amuse them.” The word “reading” here does not mean, … Read more
Recently my daughter Jessica and I spent some time traveling in Sweden, in the upcountry north of Uppsala. We don’t care for cities, and my daughter, no surprise here, is something of a traditionalist, so we visited old villages, well-preserved “gamlasgardar” or collocations of log cabins, barns, threshing floors, and so forth, and village churches. … Read more
The following is a series of open memos that I wish I could have sent to various Catholic students whom I have taught at a secular university. I hope they might help any Catholic student intending to evangelize similar campuses. Names have been faux-classicized. t t t Dear Pedadogus Antagonistes, The first few weeks at … Read more
During four years of college and seven of graduate school, most of it in philosophy and theology, I heard only one lecture on virtue — the virtue of art. Thus I consider it miraculous that the language of virtue has returned to public discourse. But the virtues don’t tell the whole story about human life. … Read more
