I would like to present a qualified defense of Christopher Dawson and his essay, “Catholicism and the Bourgeois Mind.” Jeffrey Tucker, John Zmirak and Fr. John Peter Pham each mount a strong defense of the bourgeois and the world they created, and Tucker in particular argues that thinkers like Dawson are dangerously reactionary world when … Read more
The following essay is reprinted with the permission of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute from The Intercollegiate Review. T. S. Eliot was indisputably the greatest poet writing in English in the twentieth century. He was also the most revolutionary Anglophone literary critic since Samuel Johnson, and the most influential religious thinker in the Anglican tradition … Read more
The Church was also in need of change, but only to the extent that she needed to look again at how she could most effectively change the world. We have allowed a missionary council to be domesticated. The greatest failure of the post-Vatican II Church is the failure to call forth and to form a … Read more
Mark Steyn, After America, Regnery, $23. Patrick J. Buchanan, Suicide of a Superpower, Thomas Dunne, $22. A good prophet of doom, or at least a good-hearted prophet, always hopes that he is wrong. The same might be said of persecuted prophets, even of weeping prophets, as in the ancient tradition of Jeremiah. For that … Read more
The following essay first appeared in the April 1996 edition of Crisis Magazine. It is part of today’s symposium on “the bourgeois spirit” as diagnosed by Dawson. See also Dawson’s essay, Catholicism and the Bourgeois Mind, and Jeffrey Tucker’s reply, In Defense of Bourgeois Civilization. Dawson wrote with two different audiences in mind. He … Read more
This essay is reprinted from Christopher Dawson, The Dynamics of World History, ed. John J. Mulloy. It previously appeared in the print edition of Crisis Magazine, with permission of its publisher Sheed and Ward, and was placed online by the good people at CatholicCulture.org–who provide an excellent archive of Catholic classics. It is part of … Read more
Many people that I have come across say that they believe in God, and might even acknowledge the need to conform to a moral code (quite how they discern it is another matter) but see no reason for ‘organised religion’, which they see as arbitrary creation of mankind. I think that the beauty of the … Read more
This year, as every year, the crèche has sat empty of God. The shepherds knelt, the angels sang, the ox and ass and eager lamb looked on, even Joseph and Mary stared down adoringly—at a vacant manger. There was no Infant here. When people knelt before this nativity scene to pray, they closed their … Read more
This essay first appeared in the September 1996 issue of Crisis Magazine. The Mass is the very core of the Catholic liturgy, the supremely important expression of the Church’s faith. It is clear that a skewed concept of the Mass that fails to do justice to its essence will in due time harm the believer’s … Read more
Now that Newt Gingrich has become the latest in a series of Republican front-runners, he is getting the kinds of scrutiny and attacks that have done in other front-runners. One of the issues that have aroused concern among conservative Republicans is that of amnesty for illegal immigrants, especially after Gingrich said that it would … Read more
As we all learned in grammar school, we’re coming up on the day when we show our gratitude for all the blessings God has showered upon our country. If we had good teachers, we learned to think of more than just the natural resources and easily conquered lands, and more than a blandly defined “democracy.” … Read more
A review of Money and Beauty; Bankers, Botticelli and the Bonfire of the Vanities, an exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence—September 17, 2011—January 22, 2012 In our current global economic crisis, what could be more timely than an exhibition of art that concentrates on money? The Strozzi Palace Foundation in Florence, Italy, currently has … Read more
One of the most insightful things I’ve ever read about America is G.K. Chesterton’s quip that it is “a nation with the soul of a church.” It’s a comment that cuts two ways. Chesterton made it at a time when the U.S. enforced on its citizens the unjust laws of Prohibition. That policy had been … Read more
L’Osservatore Romano’s English edition (Jan. 29—Mar. 5 1997), ran five essays on “Satanism.” Reference was made there to an earlier study written by an unnamed French theologian entitled “Faith and Demonology,” published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in 1975. The latter document covers the history of papal and Church thinking on … Read more
Many thoughtful Catholics dismiss concern for style as an affectation, an indulgence in personal taste. Like Puritan prelates, they pull their hems back from what they regard as an overemphasis on ornament and human ceremony. These are distractions from the true ecclesia, the living temple that is the people of God. If Christ is found … Read more
Logicians have an exercise called “The Liar’s Paradox” which is used to illustrate a number of things. The basic scenario is this: Your ship goes down, and eventually you drift ashore, where you are greeted by a native who informs you that everyone on this island always lies. Can you believe him? If what he … Read more
American Christians are said to be at ease in our secular consumer culture. But didn’t Christ talk about giving away one’s worldly goods and living as the lilies of the field, not pursuing wealth and luxury? The New Testament isn’t a textbook in economics or politics. The New Testament is interested in the poor. But … Read more
Some years ago, at an excellent high school in Minneapolis, I taught a seminar to junior boys on ancient and early Christian authors. The course began with a full-length reading of Homer’s Iliad, and at Christmas, with the seminar half over, my informal poll always revealed that this was the boys’ favorite work up to … Read more
Catholic opponents of the death penalty sometimes seem to lose sight of the primary purpose of punishment. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (final text) says, “Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense.” If I commit a serious offense against society, I bring about a disorder, and the point … Read more
The title of the sophomoric 1,518-page manifesto is “2083 — A European Declaration of Independence,” and its author, Anders Behring Breivik, is the self-confessed murderer of 93 people by current count. Nothing can justify his Breivik’s cold-blooded brutality, but the concerns that motivated him are both perfectly understandable and shared by many of us. Only … Read more