On the day C.S. Lewis died—November 22, 1963—the world was hardly in a position to take notice. The assassination of an American President, after all, had clearly and shockingly co-opted everything that day, including even the ending of a life unsurpassed for its sheer breath catching lucidity in defense of ordinary Christian belief. But history, … Read more
My favorite novel of mistaken identity has always been C. S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy. It’s the perfect fairy tale, beginning with a miserable young boy, Shasta, growing up in Calormen, treated like a slave by Arsheesh, the man who he assumes is his father. When one of the lords of Calormen, a … Read more
The scene is from C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength. The callow young sociology professor, Mark Studdock, an atheist and a social climber, has been detained in a cubicle deliberately fashioned with odd annoying angles and not-quite-right pictures on the wall. His detainers aim to break down in him any last sense of the inner … Read more
The trouble with atheists, some wag once wrote, is that they are always talking about God. How endlessly they obsess about him! And what strikes one straightaway about the sheer mind-numbing attention they pay to God, including especially the problems posed by us benighted folk who persist in believing in him, is that it so … Read more
Football season is upon us! And football season for my family means … perusing the catalog from Notre Dame’s Hammes Bookstore! No actual books, of course, but lots and lots of merchandise—t-shirts, sweatshirts, jackets, hats, umbrellas. How about a pair of Notre Dame sandals? Despite the internet and Amazon, actual physical catalogs keep showing up … Read more
Shakespeare’s Henry V offers this advice: “This story shall the good man teach his son….” Such counsel is urgent today, when children will learn little reliably of their history in schools, and so are all the more dependent on good souls at home who will teach them. Children being children, will especially be fascinated by … Read more
It’s a sad irony that Charles Dickens, who most likely did not believe in the deity of Jesus Christ, is the English writer most identified with Christmas, while C.S. Lewis who is one of the most articulate literary proponents of the orthodox faith in his century, has left behind almost no contribution to the literature … Read more
Recent posts about the United States and England, and especially those concerned with the decline, decay and ultimate disintegration of England have prompted my musings on the mutability of nations and cultures. Is everything subject to change? If so, is there any permanent value attached to these mutable things? Why bother about the USA or … Read more
