Often buried within the international section of American national newspapers may be found accounts of Muslim vandalism against Christian churches, so say nothing of Muslim attacks on the Christians of the Middle East. Just last week a Muslim mob badly damaged a Coptic Christian church outside Cairo; local police merely watched. No prosecution of this … Read more
In early 1472, the thirteen-year-old Prince Casimir of Poland returned to his native land from a campaign in Hungary with a dispirited and malcontented army. Much of the remaining force was made up of unpaid mercenaries. Even before crossing the border they proved unruly and prone to loot the local population, but on the Polish … Read more
Stagecoach rides across the Great Plains. Runaway horses. Murderous outlaws. Her life had all the adventure of a stock character out of a Hollywood western, but she was neither a pioneering homesteader nor a lady of doubtful virtue. She was a Catholic nun, Sister Blandina Segale, SC. Considering that she lived on the margins of … Read more
A line that is so overused that it has almost become trite is Shakespeare’s “to be or not to be.” Yet, it hits at the existential struggle of the modern world. Hamlet’s struggle embodies the difficulty of living in a world cut off from its own past. Hamlet receives a revelation of a great rupture … Read more
Just before reaching the imposing, stainless steel structure of the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Virginia, one finds a simple stone and glass building situated on a nearby hill. It is the Semper Fidelis Memorial Chapel: a place of grace. Each of the ten large glass panes that form the actual walls … Read more
Shortly before the first Gothic arches of Paris began bearing the weight of their spires, a young man arrived in Paris. His origins are unknown to us now, but his destination was clear: he had come to join the new religious community at the Abbey of St. Victor, just outside the walls of medieval Paris.He … Read more
G. K. Chesterton was a master at making plain the paradoxical character of Christianity. He knew that to stray too far to one side or another was to leave the path of orthodoxy far behind. To stay on that road was exciting, racing past the hulks of discarded heresies. “The heavenly chariot flies thundering through … Read more
Francis Clement Kelley, founder of the Catholic Church Extension Society and second Bishop of Oklahoma was born in 1870 on Price Edward Island. His Irish father was a sea trader, so Francis was formed in a one-room country school and in gales off the coast of Nova Scotia. From the first he excelled at writing. … Read more
My office holds many treasured keepsakes—a wedding photo, my children’s baptismal candles, and a fiftieth anniversary picture of my parents. In sight of where I write is also a picture of a young man and an old man, a joyful 26-year-old wearing doctoral robes for the first time and a man of about 70 clad … Read more
To find a recent exemplar of Catholic intellectual life, one ought to look to the personalist philosopher and cultural critic Dietrich von Hildebrand (12 October 1889 – 26 January 1977). Few have exercised this calling more courageously, faithfully, or with greater integrity. Hildebrand’s intellectual pursuits were anchored in the solid rock of a devout life. … Read more
Of all the various modes in which Christian life is manifested, the life of the solitary ascetic strikes our contemporary culture as the most eccentric. In a culture that underscores self-fulfillment and the gratification of virtually every appetite, it is incomprehensible to most people why anyone would choose a life involving isolation from social life … Read more
Giotto di Bondone, the fabled pre-Renaissance painter, has had a problem. Being so famous, he is a big target. His fame has engendered a cadre of critics who have, over the years, both praised his work and doubted the attributions. There are arguments about where he painted, what he painted, how he painted and who … Read more
The advantage that tragic poetry has over historical narrative seems to lie in the way individual deeds are portrayed: they are enacted. The confrontation of Angelo by Isabella in the second act of Measure for Measure, culminating in her speech against “man, proud man,” does something far better than naming the heroine’s courage, it invites … Read more
After his wife’s death, Shakespeare’s Macbeth reflects on the futility of his ambition and his life: “It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.” Macbeth’s lament stands in sharp contrast to the “sound and fury” signifying everything sounded by the “Son of Thunder,” St. John, apostle, … Read more
The beginning of the Gospel is in the angel’s words to the shepherds: “I bring you good news of a great joy,” the good news of the birth of a Savior. (Luke 2:10) What news could be better? When he first preached in the synagogue after the forty days in the desert, he himself explained … Read more
When the Supreme Court struck down all state laws restricting abortion in Roe v. Wade, the justices were undoing the work of a group of courageous physicians who had helped enact the laws a century earlier. The leading force in this movement was Dr. Horatio Robinson Storer, an energetic young obstetrician from Boston. Until the … Read more
Speaking of his medieval ancestors and ours, d’Alembert once said that “Poetry for them was reduced to a puerile mechanism.” James Madison, echoing him, judged the result of fifteen centuries of Christian civilization to be little more than “pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and … Read more
I cannot escape a constant sense, like a dull pain in the lower back, of the debilitating poverty of our present age. A slog through O’Hare Airport, for example, where I find Our Lord’s command to love my fellow man especially difficult to follow, exacerbates the ache some. Reading the story of Hernán Cortés, however, … Read more
Among the most beautiful and fascinating of Rome’s churches is the twelfth-century Basilica of San Clemente, dedicated to Pope St. Clement, who, according to early lists and reckonings of Rome’s first bishops, stands either first or third in the line of St. Peter’s successors. The apse mosaic, which sits above the high altar of San … Read more
Does sanctity run in families? The initial answer is ‘surely no.’ After all, each of us is called to sanctity, regardless of how good or bad our family was, and our holiness will ultimately be judged individually. And yet, the story of the house of Árpád makes one wonder if God does not especially bless … Read more