Protestants are drawn to Rome, though we define ourselves against it. Strictly speaking, we do not go there on pilgrimage. Yet we have always visited Rome, at once attracted and repulsed. It began in 1510, when Martin Luther took the trip that triggered the Reformation. “Rome, once the holiest . . . . Continue Reading »
Human mortality has always fascinated the greatest creative minds—from Homer declaiming on the slayings of Patroclus and Hector, to Sigmund Freud speculating on death drives. Roger Scruton even locates the significance of artistic endeavor in the fact that we understand our existence to be . . . . Continue Reading »
At the beginning of book VII of Virgil’s Aeneid, auspicious winds send the ships of the Trojan hero and his warriors to the mouth of the Tiber, where they put ashore. An oracle has foretold their coming. Aeneas is welcomed by the king of the Latins, and an alliance is forged. The king’s . . . . Continue Reading »
From G. K. Chesterton to Sidney Mead to Robert Bellah and beyond, observers have noted that America is a “nation with the soul of a church.” No one, however, has yet attempted to assess the latest manifestation of this fusion of Christianity and nationalism. Taking America Back for . . . . Continue Reading »
Face blank as absolution, from this back rowshe stares straight ahead to the small raised stageof touring musicians, lost in the rebel notes they soldtheir . . . . Continue Reading »
What Father Alexander Sherbrooke has done at St. Patrick’s Church in London is little short of miraculous. Continue Reading »
Harvard professor Elizabeth Bartholet seems to think that only public schools are capable of creating responsible, mature, informed citizens. Continue Reading »
The proponents of a new “Catholic integralism” have demonstrated an impressive ability to rile up the debate about the current American political situation. Continue Reading »
I cannot help but recognize in John Paul II a public theologian with a message relevant to our twenty-first-century situation. Continue Reading »
On the centennial of John Paul II's birth, it is worth praising the pope whose death got this cradle Catholic to leave the cradle. Continue Reading »
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