Russell Kirk was haunted by the past. Ghosts prowled his house, peering through windows, moving furniture, startling guests. Far from resenting these presences, Kirk welcomed them. For he regarded society as “a spiritual union of the dead, the living, and those yet unborn.” He propounded this . . . . Continue Reading »
When Cormac McCarthy died in June at age eighty-nine, the news touched off grief and adulation such as contemporary literary authors rarely inspire. Musicians, scientists, conservatives, Catholics, all have claimed him. One man circulated and posted the notes he’d taken after a series of phone . . . . Continue Reading »
Readers would be hard-pressed to find a religious creed in the often dark works of Cormac McCarthy. But the writer's depictions of darkness are never devoid of light, however tragic or precarious its place in the narratives. Continue Reading »
What I care most about, along with many other fans, is whether The Rings of Power fits with the spirit of Tolkien’s legendarium. My answer, so far, is a tentative yes. Continue Reading »
Aldous Huxley was in certain respects a modern disenchanted intellectual, and he had no use for actual demons; but there are persons as serious and sane as he was who can state with authority that demons and demonic possession are real. Continue Reading »
Advent announces the coming of the Lord who breaks the arms of the sex traffickers, the drug lords, the arms dealers, and all their respectable collaborators. Continue Reading »
The idea of intrinsic evil may look harsh and punitive. But to those struggling to stay afloat, it can be a lifeline. Continue Reading »
In S. Y. Agnon’s 1939 novel A Guest for the Night, one of the protagonists, Daniel Bach, recounts his loss of faith. Throughout World War I, as a soldier in the trenches, he had been meticulous about donning his tefillin to recite his daily prayers. Until one morning, the tefillin . . . . Continue Reading »
At the end of Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, Brutus and Cassius, the conspirators who had assassinated Caesar, are themselves dead. Brutus has, in fact, fallen upon his sword rather than face capture by the armies of Octavius and Mark Antony. Brutus was bad enough to betray and murder a . . . . Continue Reading »
Just in time for Halloween, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has published an English translation of the hitherto only-in-Latin rite of exorcism. Continue Reading »
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