As the sun began to set on this incredible day, I looked up at the beautiful statue of Our Lady and asked her for the blessing that she promised to give to those who travel to England’s Nazareth. The Blessed Virgin invites us all to walk that trail, to trod in the footsteps of the […]
Huckleberry Finn is no hero, though he does symbolize the American conscience at the time Mark Twain wrote, or at least the conscience Twain hoped for. Yes, “Huckleberry Finn” is a coming-of-age tale and a social criticism and satire, but it also asks crucial questions: Who actually changes? What type of American will change? Huckleberry […]
I am grateful that my mother so often insisted on making us listen to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. She knew what I did not until it was almost too late: that Rush was for a long time a solitary sentinel, watching and warning the American people (and the world) of threats to their flourishing. With […]
America must turn to that family-centered, community-based society that is anchored in God and a morality based on His law. Now is the time to gather the nation around unifying principles, not shatter it into millions of individualistic shards. Some traditional-minded Americans use a horrible metaphor to describe an outcome they desire for the nation. […]
As did St. Augustine as the barbarians tore through Rome’s gate on August 24, 410, at midnight, J.R.R. Tolkien looked out over a ruined world: a world on one side controlled by ideologues, and, consequently, a world of the Gulag, the Holocaust camps, the Killing fields, and total war; on the other: a world of […]
Incarnating the truth in art is the supreme test for a writer with convictions, and this problem is the real heart of the tension between entertainment and literature. I had a friend in England I’ll call Rosemary. She had always wanted to be a writer, so she honed her craft and eventually got a contract […]
Gil Meche His career stats indicate that he was a mediocre baseball pitcher—perhaps the epitome of mediocrity: 84 wins; 83 losses; a 4.49 Earned Run Average; a Walks-plus-Hits-to-Innings-Pitched ratio of 1.42. Yet Gil Meche, who played for the Seattle Mariners and Kansas City Royals, was responsible for one of the most astounding, yet almost unnoticed, acts of […]
Want to catch a glimpse of the face of God?—Or at least feel what it is like to know Him? Take stroll and climb the stairway to Heaven with T.S. Eliot and Russell Kirk on Ash Wednesday. Being Downriver Darrin and the distiller of the great books that I’ve had the good fortune to have […]
So here I am, offering you this Valentine’s Day gift, and if you scoff at the notion of celebrating the day, for “Hallmark invented it and that’s that,” consider giving these songs a listen anyway. They are delicious, uplifting, sensuous. And they won’t give you a hangover. Valentine’s Day is a funny sort of holiday. Some […]
It’s weird that my musings should have led me from the conviviality of the Super Bowl Party to thoughts of the Nazi Party. Such was the shadow that fell during the commercial breaks in the sporting action. As for the action itself, it contained more faith, hope and charity—i.e., the absence of hatred—than the hype […]
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