England’s Fear, Walsingham’s Hope
Today, two rivers run silently though London, one is called the River Thames, the other is known by another name: fear. The coronavirus has come amongst us. Its arrival was gradual at first. Via news reports of surreal events in far-off places it seemed to drift towards the city before suddenly striking. Panic was its … Read more
The World Must Come to Walsingham
This face, for centuries a memory, Non est species, neque decor, Expressionless, expresses God: it goes Past castled Sion. She knows what God knows, Not Calvary’s Cross nor crib at Bethlehem Now, and the world shall come to Walsingham. Frederick Wilhelmsen called Juan Donoso Cortés the Augustine of the nineteenth century: the chronicler of civilization’s … Read more
The English Restoration Has Begun
Something is stirring in England. It’s not much. A still, small voice of calm whispering in the dark. Prayers ascending like incense. A rekindled faith. No, it’s not much. Merely a mustard seed. It won’t be noticed by most people. It will go unheeded by the dead men milling around satanically in what remains of … Read more
In Search of Joseph Pearce’s England
Be careful what you read—it may change you, for better or worse. In the case of Joseph Pearce, his early reading made him a violent white supremacist. It also landed him in jail. While there, he continued to read; only this time, he read the works of G.K. Chesterton. It was not so much that … Read more
Jack the Ripper and the Defaming of a Catholic Poet
In the late autumn of 1888, five women were brutally murdered in Whitechapel, London. All were prostitutes; all were living in squalor; all died horribly in the dead of night. The killings were as vicious as they were to become infamous. They were not the first, nor, indeed, the last, of such slayings in London, … Read more
Apostasy in England and Europe
There once was an excellent Jesuit boarding school in England by the name of Beaumont, which began admitting boys back in the mid 1800s. Soon after opening its doors, it decided to challenge a neighboring school to a game of soccer. And so the headmaster sent his counterpart at nearby Eton a letter suggesting a … Read more
Visiting the Site of England’s Conversion
Landing in London the other day, we wasted no time in locating the first available train to Minster Abbey, a lovely little place where the monastic life has been around for almost fourteen hundred years, its inspiration owing to a fellow named Benedict, who pretty much founded Western Monasticism. We planned to stay a week … Read more
Awaiting the Fire’s Fall: Pentecost in Art & History
Not since the impacted savageries of the late 8th century, when Viking raiding parties ravaged the coast of England, can anything compare to the protracted destruction wrought by the German Air Force during the Battle of Britain. Between September of 1940 and May of 1941, countless incendiary bombs fell upon that brave island race. A … Read more
In Aeternum: The England that Never Changes
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
Shining in the Sun
As the Plymouth Bay Colony was starting up, the scholar Robert Burton back in England published the philosophical reflection,“Anatomy of Melancholy,” analyzing his own tendency to depression which he attributed to “black bile.” It is not clear whether his death was by hanging, but he certainly made it fashionable for philosophers to be gloomy. Yet … Read more
Bring Me The Head of Maria Stuarda
The thought of a new book, from a proverbially establishmentarian imprint, on Elizabeth I’s spymaster is not one that immediately gladdens the heart. Anyone who has actually been expected to spend time in modern England – rather than simply viewing it through a Downton-Abbey-generated haze – knows perfectly well that English anti-Catholicism has reached during … Read more
Russell Kirk on the Moral Imagination
In the franchise bookshops of the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred eighty-one, the shelves are crowded with the prickly pears and the Dead Sea fruit of literary decadence. Yet no civilization rests forever content with literary boredom and literary violence. Once again, a conscience may speak to a conscience in the pages … Read more
Do Catholics Have Too Many Babies?
When we were colonists and fought a war against the king and Parliament so that we could secede from the British Empire and be independent of it, we also fought for the value of personal freedom. That is the idea that in matters of personal choice, the government should play no role. The king only … Read more
Give Me Liberty, But for Now I’ll Take This Book
Among America’s amazing pantheon of founders, Patrick Henry stands out for his stirring speeches and fervent commitment to liberty, virtue, and small government. The Virginia planter, lawyer, and politician strongly denounced Great Britain’s political and economic control of the American colonies and played a leading role in the movement for independence. More controversially, Henry’s love … Read more
In Defense of Christopher Dawson
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
Catholicism and the Bourgeois Mind
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
Longing for Eden
Tolkien: Man and Myth Joseph Pearce, Ignatius, 1999, 242 pages, $24.95 Few writers and few books have inspired such extremes of opinion as J. R. R. Tolkien and the work that has become synonymous with his name, the fantasy epic, The Lord of the Rings. Critics of the literary establishment certainly spared no insulting … Read more
Time Magazine and the Constitution
The Fourth of July may be just a holiday for fireworks to some people. But it was a momentous day for the history of this country and the history of the world. Not only did July 4, 1776 mark American independence from England, it marked a radically different kind of government from the governments that prevailed … Read more
The Unhidden Faith of Lady Falkland
While plenty of scholars continue to debate Shakespeare’s Catholicity (or lack thereof), there are other English Renaissance dramatists whose Catholicism is less conjectural. One such Catholic is Elizabeth Cary (Lady Falkland, officially), the first known woman to publish an original play in English with the Tragedy of Miriam the Fair Queen of Jewry in 1613. … Read more
