Lately, I have found myself increasingly involved in the pioneering adventure of helping to start new schools and colleges in the classical liberal arts tradition. I am on the boards of both Rosary College and another college, the name of which I am not yet at liberty to disclose. The former is a two-year undergraduate [...]
Little has changed in the years since Hilaire Belloc departed bodily from King’s Land. The ghost of his powerful absence still dwells in his stead, and the mill that he restored stands tall and erect, and in full working order. The great hills of the South Country They stand along the sea; And it’s there [...]
The Catholic Church has produced some of the greatest scientists who have ever lived. These scientists might not be known to Catholics, or else, if they are known as scientists, they might not be known as Catholic scientists. This being so, let’s look at a dynamic duo of great scientists who should be known—and whose Catholicism [...]
For many years I’ve been teaching online courses for Red Cultural in Chile. During last week’s session of a course on “Literary Converts”, based on my book of that title, I was asked whether there are still good works of literature being written today. I replied effusively in the affirmative. I was then asked whether [...]
E.F. Schumacher succeeded in popularizing Catholic social teaching in a way that far exceeded the limited success of Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton to do the same thing fifty years earlier. It is not often that the publication of a single book can change the perception of millions of people around the world. Small Is Beautiful by [...]
The final word on the legacy of John Fisher and Thomas More, and the final judgment (under God) on why we should see them as heroes, is given by G. K. Chesterton, a man who proves in his very self that the killing of More and Fisher did not kill learning, laughter or holiness: "There [...]
Do we not find ourselves living with a scenario in which the liberal elites consider themselves to be the wise, cool minds overseeing and running things. Do they not look upon those who oppose their agenda as being a “savage,” “uncivilized” set of local people, natives, “deplorables”, who must be subordinated to the elite’s will [...]
Ngo Dinh Diem, the first President of South Vietnam, and JFK were both Catholics, though Catholics of very different persuasions. Landscape The assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, was one of the landmark moments and one of the most remembered events in twentieth-century history. The assassination of President Diem of Vietnam [...]
Christian realist fiction refrains from the depiction of anything fantastic, magical, miraculous, or overtly supernatural, instead showing the struggle between good and evil which rages in each individual human heart. Here are four such novels that may not be classics, but which are worth reading and perhaps revisiting. In an effort to serve as a [...]
Mother Mary Lange lived to be more than ninety years old, dying in 1882. Much changed in Baltimore and in the United States during her long and self-sacrificial life. But one thing that never changed was her loyalty to the Catholic Faith and her tireless life of service to Christ and the Church He founded. [...]
Why not imagine what Chesterton would choose for summer reading were he to return for a brief visit from the undying lands, where we can imagine he now makes his permanent residence? This is the time of year when people are asked to compile their summer reading lists. The idea of these lists, as far [...]
In seeing his broken and mortal body in the light of the permanence of his immortal soul, novelist Maurice Baring learned to accept his affliction. Such acceptance is not only the secret of life, as his priest character had proclaimed, it is also the secret of love. There is a painting in London’s National Portrait [...]
Something is stirring underground. Something exciting. Something new. Something invigorating. Refreshing. Needed. The something to which I refer is a new Catholic cultural revival, which is being made manifest in the visual arts, music and most especially in literature. Last week, in the first of these “notes from underground”, I focused on murder mysteries being [...]
Perhaps the final fall that proceeds from a life of prideful “success,” irrespective of the judgment of God which follows, is the miserable way in which tyrants die. I was intrigued by some of the comments prompted by my essay “Does History Repeat Itself?” In particular, my eyebrows were raised by the objections to my [...]