Ted Cruz failed to endorse Donald Trump for president. Snore. It’s a sign of how out-of-touch our political class has become that they speak of Cruz as a possible presidential candidate. In him, see the rotting flesh of Reaganism, a noble political project that no longer speaks to our time. Continue Reading »
In the 1960s, Popes John XXIII and Paul VI initiated a new Vatican approach to the countries behind the iron curtain, the Ostpolitik.The tactics included a cessation of all public Vatican criticism of communist regimes. No serious student of these matters judges the Ostpolitik a success. Those claiming otherwise are willfully ignorant, obtuse, unwilling to learn from the past—or, perhaps, all of the above. Continue Reading »
Why the lack of a catholic appreciation for legitimate liturgical diversity? No one can truthfully claim that the Ordinary Form prohibits ad orientem celebration. So, who’s afraid of ad orientem worship, and why? Continue Reading »
Healing people’s wounds means counseling them with the love of Christ, but never misleading them with erroneous teachings or allowing them to abuse Holy Communion. Continue Reading »
Ben Lerner’s elegant, amusing essay turns on a distinction between Poetry and poems. Poetry is Caedmon’s dream, a virtual ideal that actual poems can’t live up to. “The fatal problem with poetry,” Lerner writes, is “poems.” Every poet is, inevitably, “a tragic figure.” Continue Reading »
“For me, the true poet is the metaphysician.” That is almost certainly an exaggeration. But we ignore the metaphysician in the poet at our own peril. Continue Reading »