One of the most remarkable features of our society is its blithe dismissal of tradition. Religious practices that have long shaped our social and political life are held in contempt. Time-tested convictions that guided generations before us are not just second-guessed but mocked and denounced. It is . . . . Continue Reading »
In the late 1960s, a sociologist described French theorist Michel Foucault (1926–1984) as “a sort of frail, gnarled samurai who was dry and hieratic, who had the eyebrows of an albino and a somewhat sulfurous charm, and whose avid and affable curiosity intrigued everyone.” Claude Mauriac, . . . . Continue Reading »
Every generation thinks itself the best, or the worst, or the first, or the last. Anything to distinguish it from the generations that came before. Intergenerational contempt is nothing new, even if it purports to be: It was there even as Marcus Tullius Cicero was beheaded in Rome in 43 b.c. But . . . . Continue Reading »
Edmund Campion (1540–81) and Elizabeth Anscombe (1919–2001) were among the most brilliant of their generations of Oxford students: he at St. John’s College, she at St. Hugh’s. Later, each held fellowships in the university and delivered sermons in the university church of St. Mary the . . . . Continue Reading »
The unrest that erupted in late May 2020 started in Minneapolis, my hometown, with the death of George Floyd in police custody. In the protests and riots that followed, Black Lives Matter and Antifa were the shock troops, “police brutality” the rallying cry. It seemed at first an uprising from . . . . Continue Reading »
Cancel culture is not just a culture that cancels the past. It is a culture that cancels culture itself. Continue Reading »
The idea that one can report on one’s own death is paradoxical, if not preposterous. As Epicurus wrote in his Letter to Menoeceus, “When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not.” To which Woody Allen added the footnote, “I don’t mind dying . . . as long as I . . . . Continue Reading »
For better or worse, it’s an EC world, we just live in it.
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Fr. Reginald Thomas Foster, O.C.D., inspired thousands to love and study Latin.
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Cluny Media republishes rare and hard-to-find classics of Catholic letters. Continue Reading »
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